“This generation,” said Jennifer Welsh, the 2004 Hart House lecturer, “really is the Charter Generation, very much raised on the ideas of rights and duties in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but also a generation essentially raised on globalization. It seemed natural to me, for people of our age-well, you’re all younger than me now-to be asking questions about citizenship.”
Welsh spoke with The Varsity on Wednesday before delivering the 2004 Hart House Lecture, “Where Do I Belong? Exploring Citizenship in the 21st Century.” Her lecture was delivered to a crowd of several hundred in the Great Hall at Hart House.
Welsh knows a little about the complexities and confusions of citizenship. Born in Regina, her career has so far been impressively transatlantic, taking her from the University of Saskatchewan, where she studied Political Science, to a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, to a post at the European University Institute in Florence, a job with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, and lecturing positions at U of T, McGill University, and her current job as a professor of International Relations at Oxford, where she studies Canada from afar.
With the 2004 Hart House Lecture, Welsh is asking how the world, and Canada, is going to define citizenship in the 21st century. And while she finds the idea of “global citizenship” exciting, she believes that in reality most people, Canadians included, will still define themselves in relation to a country, not the whole world.
“We’re in a period where the concept of ‘The West’ is under strain,” she said. “And that has implications for any country that considers itself part of The West, including Canada. There is a real divide, a noticeable divide, between the United States and some states in Western Europe, and what’s interesting to me is that, a year on from the Iraq war, that divide is not lessening. If anything it’s growing. And that is a troubling backdrop for my own study of what others think of Canada.”
Welsh made two main arguments against a concept of “global citizenship”: “One is about the limits of global democracy,” she said. “If you attach the notion of citizenship to requirements of democracy, which I do…then I think when we look at global governance at the moment, we clearly don’t have that. We have global activists, we have non-state actors, we have global issues; but we don’t have global citizens. It is really restricted to those who are able to participate at that level.
“The second piece of this is my scepticism that we actually apply the same level of moral concern to individuals around the world. We have these human rights, but the ability to exercise them, and the ability of the international community to ensure that people are protected is severely constrained. I think that really circumscribes the idea of global citizenship.”
Welsh said that she believes Canada’s role on the international stage should be one of a “model citizen.”
“I chose those two words very carefully, the idea of ‘model’ and ‘citizen.’ They’re both aspirational, because as my lecture is showing, I don’t believe we’re there yet. ‘Model’ has two main dimensions to it. One is that I think a key part of our foreign policy going forward is simply going to be acting out who we are. Our role in the world is as a model of what a liberal democracy can be. The second is, when you’re a model, you demonstrate for others, much as a teacher might do. We’re a model, not the model. As a model you’re not really out to change others; it’s like the best teachers you ever had-they didn’t tell you what to think. They developed a critical capacity in you to think for yourself.
“The ‘citizen’ piece of this is again aspirational. To be a citizen is to be very different from [being] a power on the international stage. To be a citizen is to contribute, to accept that you’re very rarely going to act unilaterally. We need to accept that in the 21st century we’re going to be collaborating with others, and it’s not always going to be simple to see where Canada made the difference. But as a model citizen you don’t care. We need to grow up and not seek to be grabbing the newspaper headlines.”
Welsh’s lecture is available in a booklet which can be purchased from Hart House. Her forthcoming book, At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century, will be published by HarperCollins in the fall.
