Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Against a backdrop of global mobility and communication, the notion of citizenship is increasingly conceptualized beyond the institutional framework of the nation-state. From the nation-blind approach of cosmopolitan citizenship to explorations of postnational membership, transnational citizenship, flexible citizenship, diasporic citizenship, or biological citizenship, the language of citizenship appears to exceed the limits of national citizenship. In this rich scholarly landscape, however, a theoretical question remains elusive: if cosmopolitan or postnational citizens must be citizens “of” something, what is that something? Do these newer forms of citizenship have a referent other than the nation? To reconcile the puzzling persistence of national citizenship with postnational, transnational or cosmopolitan scholarship, sociologist A. Aneesh proposes a framework for citizenship that does not allude, at its genesis, to the nation-state; yet, it identifies the state as the sole enforcer of rights in a regime of “weak citizenship.”