Abstract
Instances of popular mobilization are often analyzed through their
most prominent repertoires and demands. However, protest waves
encompass diverse aspirations, modalities, temporalities, and emo-
tional intensities, reflecting varied lived experiences. The complex
interplay between mobilization, everyday politics, and local struggles
often remains underexplored. This article deploys lived citizenship as
a device for capturing the differentiated social locations, relations,
practices and emotions that mediate subject relations with the state
in episodes of mass mobilization. Focusing on the Arab uprisings, it
offers a novel and comprehensive reading of the literature from the
perspective of citizenship and everyday lived realities. In approaching
the uprisings as lived and performed in the squares, on the margins,
in mass demonstrations, violent reprisals, resource reclamation and
everyday encroachment, it brings to the fore the myriad practices of
citizenship enacted in the course of the uprisings and their aftermath.
In surveying the literature, it highlights the innovative ways in which
the contributions to this special issue engage with notions of lived
citizenship in the context of the uprisings, examining its connections
to questions around subjectivation, infrastructure, grabbing back,
brokerage of care, and practices of voice, exit and loyalty.