In 2013, the Dominican state ruled to uphold a 2010 constitutional amendment that stripped thousands of Dominicans of Haitian origin of their citizenship and forced them to leave the country during summer 2015. About 2,200 of these people became displaced in Anse-à-Pitres, where most took up residence in temporary camps. I use the term forced migrants or displaced persons interchangeably to refer to these people. Many endure challenges in meeting their daily survival needs in Haiti, a country with extreme poverty, considerable political instability, and still in the process of rebuilding itself from the devastating earthquake of 2010. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic field- work in Anse-à-Pitres, I examine how these displaced people, in the face of statelessness and amid their precarious social and economic conditions, create survival strategies by drawing upon everyday labor mobility and informal economic activities within and across their communities. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the involvement of these displaced people in community life through socio-economic practices attests to a sense of belonging and produces a form of substantive citizenship in their absence of legal citizenship. This kind of substantive citizenship is also shaped by the ability of the displaced people to re-define life goals, participate in local meetings with the local state and organizations on the ground, and challenge systems of power that seek to impose their choices upon them. In this dissertation, I argue against construing the displaced people as hopeless by focusing on the forms of power and agency that they exercise in and over their lives, which make them agents of their self-development.

This thesis takes part in the discussion of the of citizenship and what it means to be a citizen within the social aspects. In 2002, The British Overseas Act conferred British citizenship to Montserratians and other British Overseas Territories Citizens. The scope of the study is to study formal and substantive citizenship for Montserratians as British citizens. The overarching research question is to what extent citizens of Montserrat enjoy formal and substantive citizenship as part of a British Overseas Territory. This is divided into following research questions: 1)     How do the Montserratians perceive the value of their British substantive citizenship and status as British Overseas Territory?2) What views are there on the partnership between the United Kingdom and Montserrat in relation to the British citizenship?  By using Reiter’s (2013) arguments of citizenship as a relational asset and citizenship as a social role, a case study with field studies and qualitative interviews were conducted in Montserrat to explore the issues of citizenship. Results show distinctions between formal access and perception of access to services such as passport, healthcare and education. The results also point to Montserratian not enjoying substantive British citizenship, with tensions in the political system and lack of representation.

This thesis is a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews that were conducted with six highly educated young second-generation immigrants from the deprived neighborhood of Bäckby in Västerås. By aiming to understand how the participants portray their substantive citizenship and its impact upon political participation as an essential pillar of Swedish democracy, the author focused upon how the participants described their perceived discrimination, sense of belonging, transnationalism, and political participation. The answers were transcribed using the intelligent verbatim method and coded deductively based on a wide range of relevant literature. Among many findings, the study showed that the participants were aware of the bright barrier framing their place of comfort as well as they were highly attached to Bäckby. However, the majority of the participants considered the homeland to be a country outside of Sweden. Peregrinus citizenship was the outcome of the author's interpretations of the participants' substantive citizenship, which also was a possible explanation of the low interest in politics that the participants illustrated through their answers. Among the study's conclusions was stated that the second-generation immigrants are not only a risk group because of social risk factors present within the deprived neighborhood, but also because of the similar factors present outside of it. / Det här examensarbete är en kvalitativ studie baserad på semistrukturerade intervjuer som genomfördes med sex högutbildade unga andra generationens invandrare från den eftersatta stadsdelen Bäckby i Västerås. Genom att försöka förstå hur deltagarna framställer sitt substantivmedborgarskap och dess inverkan på det politiska deltagandet som en viktig pelare i den svenska demokratin fokuserade författaren på hur deltagarna beskrev sin upplevda diskriminering, känsla av tillhörighet, transnationalism och politiskt deltagande. Svaren transkriberades med hjälp av den intelligenta Verbatim metoden och kodade deduktivt baserat på ett brett spektrum av relevant litteratur. Bland många fynd visade studien att deltagarna var medvetna om den ljusa barriären som inramade sin komfortplats och de var mycket fästa vid Bäckby. Majoriteten av deltagarna ansåg dock att hemlandet var ett land utanför Sverige. Peregrinus medborgarskap var resultatet av författarens tolkningar av deltagarnas substantivmedborgarskap, vilket också var en möjlig förklaring till det låga intresse för politik som deltagarna illustrerade genom sina svar. Bland studiens slutsatser uppgavs att andra generationens invandrare är inte bara en riskgrupp på grund av sociala riskfaktorer som finns inom det utsatta området, utan också på grund av liknande faktorer som finns utanför det.