Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The Citizenship Without the Nation conference was a two day conference held at the Liu Institute for Global Issues from October 29 – 30, 2010. The conference explored how regional and local dialogues intersect with the national discourse on citizenship. There is significant work on citizenship at the national level, but the same issues take on very different meanings in the Vancouver context given the mix of residents in the city, the languages they speak, and the city’s geographic location. Sessions considered how people belong to neighbourhoods, cities, regions and nations. Participants were asked about the possibility of belonging to several communities at once and interrogated what happens when the promise of national citizenship fails to deliver locally. The counterpoint was also addressed: what happens when the local fails to live up to the national ideal?
Chair: Ellen Woodsworth, Vancouver City Councillor
Daniel Hiebert, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia
Baldwin Wong, Social Planner, City of Vancouver
Andrew Pask, Director, Vancouver Public Space Network
Hayne Wai, Past President, Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia