Speaker Series – Yasemin Soysal

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship presents:

Liberal Agentic Citizenship, its Global Reach and Limitations: Europe and China Comparisons
Yasemin Soysal (WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany)

Since the 1990s, global cultural shifts driven by neoliberalism have ushered in significant changes in the institutions of citizenship. This has given rise to an increasingly agentic conception of the individual, with strong meritocratic ideological underpinnings manifested across a wide range of policy and institutional domains. While the normative foundations and the institutional embodiment of agentic citizenship are widely studied, we know less about the individual enactments of such citizenship. Drawing from data collected through a unique, representative survey I will present comparative evidence on agentic and meritocratic orientations and their implications for solidaristic inclinations among higher education students in China and Europe.

This series is sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, which is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).