(Re)Articulations of Citizenship

The confluences of global flows, by forming new spaces and entanglements of possibilities, have a mutating effect on citizenship. In an ever-shifting landscape configured by mobilities and positionalities, the idea of citizenship tied to the terrain and imagination of a nation-state (Anderson [1983] 1991) is called into question. In theory, citizenship as protected entitlements depends on membership in a nation-state. But increasingly in practice, entitlements and benefits are realized through specific mobilizations and claims in milieus of globalized contingency. The movements of global markets, technologies, and populations interact to shape novel spaces of political mobilization and claims. As rights and protections long associated with citizenship are becoming disarticulated from the state, they are re-articulated with elements such as market-based interests, transnational agencies, mobile elites, and marginialized populations.