Unfamiliar acts of citizenship: enacting citizenship in vernacular music and language from the space of marginalised intergenerational migration

Conceptualising citizenship as an act rather than a status enables us to rethink the familiarity of both ‘who’ can be a citizen and the type of ‘practices’ that can be understood as citizenship. This paper focuses on unfamiliar practices of citizenship per se by exploring the liminal site from which intergenerational migrant youth resist the taken-for-granted space of citizenship through a turn towards vernacular music and language. It considers how citizenship is resisted here through the unfamiliar act of turning away from either identifying or, failing/refusing to identify with the nation-state. It explores the effect of this move in challenging narrow national linguistic and ethnic ideologies through the development of non-standard language practice and cross-cutting musical styles. It argues that citizenship is enacted in this move by creating a space in vernacular music and language for expressions of hybrid political identity and belonging. © 2016 Taylor & Francis.