Citizenship Futures: 'the Politics Of Hope' In India And Europe

Hope for the future, we contend, remain central to the political imaginations of socially excluded people. However, the relationship between hope, social exclusion and citizenship are poorly understood. Much of the existing literature primes scholars to infer that social exclusion spawns hopelessness, fear and mistrust. Policy analysts point to the paucity of 'aspirations' among the socially excluded as a key factor for the perpetuation of poverty and inequality. Against this literature, by underscoring 'the politics of hope' (Appadurai, 2013: 129) harboured by socially excluded people, the proposed research will provide insights into the ways in which they imagine their 'citizenship futures'.

It seeks to analytically and empirically investigate the 'politics of hope' among socially excluded people. The project will achieve this by ethnographically documenting the political subjectivities of socially excluded people in the United Kingdom, France and the Indian State of Maharashtra and thereby uncovering the ensemble of interpretations, emotions and practices that constitute 'the politics of hope'. By examining the 'politics of hope', the project will deepen our understanding of the ways in which socially excluded people imagine their 'citizenship futures. It will do so by straddling disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and the arts and humanities.

Project objective: The central aim of this research project is to develop theoretically and empirically the concept of 'citizenship futures'.
RQ1: What 'hopes' to socially excluded people harbour for their futures, in the context of the social relations of power to which they are subjected? RQ1 will be addressed through comparative ethnographies in London, Paris and Mumbai.
RQ2: What institutional factors shape people's 'hopes' for the future? RQ2 will be addressed through a historical-institutionalist analysis of political narratives in the UK, France and the Indian State of Maharashtra.

For the purpose of analysis, we propose to adapt Zipin et al (2015), whose research on education (drawing on Bourdieu and Appadurai) usefully theorise three ways in which hopes are constituted through social-cultural processes. Doxic hopes are 'dominant norms about worthy futures' circulating through media and policy discourse. Habituated hopes are embodied dispositions grounded in biographic-historical conditions (habitus). Emergent hope are 'future-tending impulses' 'emerging among young people as their lives apprehend the present-becoming-future'.

The qualitative data will be systematically generated, answering the research questions as directly as possible. NVivo will be used to organise and share data (transcripts, field notes and other materials).

The comparative approach proposed under the rubric of the project will make three further contributions to knowledge-production. One, by bringing the UK, France and India within a common frame of investigation and analysis, the project will blur the boundaries between such categories as 'developed' and 'developing' countries, 'Global North' and 'Global South', and other such binaries that hinder an appreciation of the shared problems faced by people across these scholarly silos. Second, by recruiting an India-based researcher to conduct ethnographic research on poverty in the UK, the project will contribute to emerging methodological discussions on 'reversing the gaze'. Third, by adopting a collaborative approach to ethnography, the project will encourage the collaboration of researchers across national contexts and their interlocutors in the production of ethnographic texts.

The research will be conducted by a multidisciplinary team offering complementary expertise. The in-depth ethnography favoured by sociologists and anthropologists will be complemented by innovative historical-institutional analysis developed by political scientists.

Who will benefit from this project
1). Governments (national, regional and municipal),
2). Actors in civil society focused on addressing social exclusion, poverty and inequality,
3). UN agencies (UNICEF, ILO and UNDP); and
4). Development partners (World Bank and OECD).
5). Academic researchers involved in this project
6). Academic researchers researching themes social exclusion, urbanism, historical institutionalism, comparative politics, ethnography and political aesthetics will particularly benefit from our research
7). Academic researchers interested in comparative and collaborative ethnography, especially those which 'reverse the gaze'
8). Socially excluded people in urban areas of mega cities
How will they benefit?
1). Enhanced appreciation of 'hopes' harboured by socially excluded people
2). Improved understanding of 'hope' and the ways in which shapes 'ethics of possibilities'
3). Greater awareness of the connections between ''ethics of possibilities' and people's imaginations of the future
4). Better appreciation of the connections between imaginations of the future and imaginations of citizenship
4). Ethnographic methods of researching hope, possibilities, and imaginations of 'citizenship futures'
5). Historical and institutional factors that shape people's hope
6). Research capacity building in collaborative and comparative ethnographies that 'reverse the gaze'
What will be done to ensure that they benefit?
Our data will provide succinct summaries of the hopes harboured by socially excluded people, their vision of the future, and the strategies they propose to achieve these. With their permission, we will provide these summaries to activists in civil society, municipal officials and practitioners in NGOs and foundations who might be interested in working with them.

In the medium term, we will establish a project website to disseminate the core project findings. The website will allow users to navigate about the project easily and thereby inform them about project progress. More importantly, the content of the website will present the human dimension of social exclusion and provide insights to the public on the 'hopes' harboured by socially excluded people. We will also invite their interlocutors to post blogs or notes on the website, expressing their 'hopes' for the 'future'.

Working papers documenting findings at each stage of the project will be published on the project website. We will also use alternative sharper formats such as blog posts, 2-page summaries and infographics to communicate important key points to a wider audience in a timely way. We will use social media for further dissemination and engagement.

In the short term, project researchers will convene meetings with community-level stakeholders throughout the course of the project. The purpose of these meetings will be to share project findings from other locations so as to convey to them the sorts of emergent hopes harboured by people who share similar circumstances. By facilitating the exchange of stories about possible futures, the project researchers will enable community-level stakeholders to consider their hopes in the light of those harboured by others.

Throughout the project, we will publicize the research in the UK, France and India including through national and local media, policy-focused interviews and personal contacts.

We take public engagement very seriously. In this vein, we will curate and organise exhibitions of photographs from the project will be displayed to members of the public to inform them about persisting social exclusions coinciding with unprecedented concentration of wealth. Postcards of photographs will be printed and shared with interested members of the public.

Findings will also be presented widely to policy audiences. Articles will be submitted to journals oriented towards the policy community.