Identity Matters: A Social Psychology of Everyday Citizenship

This paper takes as its focus the need for psychologists to take issues of culture seriously. In doing so, it is important that psychologists adopt a critical approach to many widely held and taken-for-granted assumptions about culture and cultural processes. In particular, there is a pressing need to explore the ways in which constructions of culture routinely feature in the marginalisation of minority group members. Using examples drawn from the UK, I explore how cultural diversity can be represented by majority group members to question others’ belonging within the national community. In turn, I consider the implications of this for minority group members’ everyday (informal) experiences of citizenship (e.g. their ability to be heard in discussions about the nation and the challenges it faces). I also consider minority group members’ experiences of such marginalisation and the various ways in which exclusionary constructions of culture and belonging may be contested.