Paz, Alejandro I. “Speaking like a Citizen: Biopolitics and Public Opinion in Recognizing Non-Citizen Children in Israel.” Language & Communication 48 (2016): 18-27.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2016.01.002
Abstract
This paper examines the public sphere process by which non-citizen children of labor migrants came to be recognized as Israeli citizens. In response to a public campaign, three government resolutions were issued in the 2000s to provide Israeli citizenship for these young non-citizens. Generally, studies of non-citizen migrants have emphasized their deportability and illegality as the primary aspect of the biopolitics of contemporary citizenship. On the other hand, I draw attention to the mass mediated process from which public opinion emerges to set the boundary between citizen and non-citizen. To describe this, I examine the pragmatics of voicing non-citizen children in public discourse. I also describe how legal documentation became the semiotic technology through which public opinion was rationalized bureaucratically.
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