Performing Citizenship through Design

In the face of global protests and conflicts over spatial rights, this
paper proposes another framework for participatory design. As
participation necessitates the question of participation in, what
and for whom, we wish to bring in perspectives from citizens studies
in which citizenship is something to be claimed, enacted and
performed, as a potential for decolonizing the universal claim of
participation in “participatory design” and reflecting on role of
the designer in current social struggles. Instead of creating neutral
participatory spaces for democratic dialogue, we argue that the
designer may recognize the productivity of affective relations. With
examples from a deportation camp in Denmark and a seminar in
marginalized spaces of São Paulo, we address to how designers
and activists turn the gaze from making minority groups participate
in design and instead work with embodied and mediatized
perspectives and the ethics of affect in the design process.