In the 1990s, active citizenship and community involvement spread as core concepts in social policies across post-welfarist North-western Europe. Active citizenship has been promoted as an indispensable tool for the regulation of society, in policing and safety policies, provision of social services, welfare and health policies, and local economic development (Body-Gendrot 2003; Mayer 2003; Uitermark 2003; Cruikshank 1999; O’Malley & Palmer 1996; Rose 1996), but it has been particularly prominent in politics for the regeneration of – often urban – public space (Giddens 1998; Imrie 2004). These days, involvement, consultation, and participation are pervasive notions that emerge as a new specialisation of government, having moved from the sphere of theory and social critique into professional programs and knowledge. As a consequence, new relations between citizens, professionals and policy emerge. Active citizenship turns client-citizens into co-producers and co-deliverers of services, while the tasks of professionals increasingly shift from service delivery to the co-ordination and mediation of citizen involvement in policy programs. Community involvement has been described alternatively as a new successful technique or strategy to enhance the scope and effectiveness of government, or as a means to democratise policymaking and service provision. However, little attention has been paid so far to the new dilemmas, complexities, contradictions, and resistance in the relation between government and the governed that emerge when active citizens are ‘made’; indeed, the readiness of citizens to become activated is all too often taken for granted (Flint 2002; Larner & Walters 2000).

In this chapter, the analysis of a concrete program to involve residents in the management of public space reveals the practices deployed by professionals to activate city residents and to mediate between individual needs and demands of citizens, setting collective goals. More specifically, I focus on the way these practices affect how ‘activated citizens’ think about themselves and their relation to their neighbourhood, city and fellow citizens, leading to potentially disturbing contradictions that provoke mixed feelings and resistance.