Transnational Citizenship Capacity-Building: Moving the Conversation in New Directions

Challenging statist understandings of citizenship neglectful of their own ironies, we explore the literature on circulation to argue that political actors build citizenship capacities through the transfer of various technologies, ideas, and modes of organization and by enhancing self-understanding across and within borders. This work is largely conceptual. Although we focus on transnational activist engagement with and within the Middle East, the theoretical linkages we make here can be extended to other social and political actors that operate within and across multiple geographical locales. To make our case, we briefly examine the importance of transnational circulation for citizenship capacity-building through a review of the relevant literature and then discuss how theories related to liminality and rhizomatic action can move the theoretical discussion in new directions. Our central argument is that the circular flow of people, political ideas, and tools across nation-state borders—including activists’ affinities, identifications, loyalties, animosities, and hostilities—are transforming contemporary social and political relations, including how people see themselves as citizens and build civic capacities in others. Political actors who act purposefully in various sites and scales of struggle are transforming how political subjectivity and citizenship are negotiated, claimed, justified, and legitimated regardless of citizenship status.