Noncitizenship and Global Inequalities

Abstract

This panel explores noncitizenism in the context of global inequalities, using legal, political and economic perspectives. As a conceptual framework, noncitizenism contributes to an understanding of how global inequalities are sustained and reproduced, as well as how noncitizens perceive, negotiate and mobilise various forms of noncitizen membership despite the limitations imposed on them by structural inequalities. Citizenist perspectives on membership tend to frame citizenship as a source of equality, which masks and legitimises the global inequalities perpetuated by citizenship itself. Conceptual constructions of citizenship as equality can be found not only at the level of theorising membership within one state, but also at the global international level, where they co-exist with the reality of unequally distributed global resources, and persistent neocolonial patterns of exploitation and domination among states facilitated by international economic, political and legal systems. An example of framing citizenship as equality at the international level is the human right to a nationality under international law. For the purposes of implementation of this right, international law is indifferent as to which nationality an individual has or can access, and is either indifferent or hostile to the noncitizen relations this individual may already have with one or more states. Noncitizenism provides a perspective on global inequalities that centers noncitizen forms of membership, and the experiences of such memberships, both within the boundaries of states and beyond them. As such, it offers a framework for a better understanding of the citizenism’s complicity in reproducing global inequalities, as well as understanding how noncitizens must live and act despite the structures that frame them as outsiders to the spaces in which they are embedded. Papers in this panel, by adopting a noncitizenist perspective, question citizenist structures, concepts and institutional environments that reproduce racial hierarchies, homogenised national identities, and rigid standards for inclusion and exclusion based on citizenship in various domains of engagement within and beyond the state.

Title	Details
Can Noncitizen Power Shape Global Governance?	View Paper Details
Citizenism as an Ideology of Domination	View Paper Details
International Law on Nationality Through the Lens of Noncitizenism	View Paper Details
Noncitizenship and Unionism: Migrant Cleaners' Struggles in Athens and the Case of Konstantina Kuneva	View Paper Details