The Repositioning of Citizenship: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics

TLDR

Citizenship scholarship has traditionally linked citizenship to the national state, but contemporary transformations challenge this connection by altering the conditions that historically tied citizenship to the state. The study investigates how two interrelated conditions—state changes and the rise of new actors—may reshape the traditional link between citizenship and the national state. The authors identify two mechanisms: post‑1980s globalization has reshaped national states through privatization, deregulation, and a stronger international human‑rights regime, while emerging actors, groups, and communities, empowered by these shifts, increasingly reject automatic identification with the nation‑state.

Abstract

MOST OF THE SCHOLARSHIP ON CITIZENSHIP HAS CLAIMED A NECESSARY CONNECTION to the national state. The transformations afoot today raise questions about this proposition insofar as they significantly alter those conditions that in the past fed the articulation between citizenship and the national state. The context for this possible alteration is defined by two major, partly interconnected conditions. One is the change in the position and institutional features of national states since the 1980s resulting from various forms of globalization. These range from economic privatization and deregulation to the increased prominence of the international human-rights regime. The second is the emergence of multiple actors, groups, and communities partly strengthened by these transformations in the state, and increasingly unwilling automatically to identify with a nation as represented by the state.