IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

This paper explores issues of citizenship and public/private space in the context of Neo-liberalism and its associated “roll-back” of contemporary welfare state provisions and the broader corresponding de-valuing of a public sphere and an inclusive citizenry. In this context, ideas of “social citizenship” have yielded to market-based citizenship in which status is increasingly and more narrowly derived from labour market attachment. The increasing entanglement of citizenship rights with labour market roles has significant implications for women, who are 3 times more likely to hold multiple part time jobs, have lower earnings than their male counterparts and occupy a disproportionate share of the precarious labor market. What does this mean for how they live in and shape a “livable city”? Qualitative research data on low-income lone mothers’ grounds this discussion, enabling an analysis of women’s reflections on their relationship to their communities and to the broader political and social realms as well as how their experiences as citizens shape their constructed subjectivities. Recognizing ‘citizen’ to be an already problematic concept for women, given their historical exclusion and for many women, their continuing marginalization, the paper takes up questions of women’s access to the public sphere and the meanings attached to ‘public’ and ‘private’ in contemporary North American life. The paper argues that gender rights and the broader contestation for increased social and economic equity remain critical challenges made more important in the context of increasing employment precarity and income disparity.