Active Noncitizenship and Dynamic Capabilities

This paper will introduce the notion of ‘noncitizenship’ as opposed to the hyphenated terminology of ‘non-citizenship’. Noncitizenship is more than the negation of formal citizenship and the noncitizenship terminology allows theory to talk about noncitizen rights without deferring to those of citizens. Active noncitizenship is when the dormant status of noncitizenship is activated or ‘experienced’. This may be done by the individual him or herself, or it may be forced upon the individual by the state. For example, consider Canadian citizens in the Inuit community who have actively been abstaining in elections in order to demonstrate their rejection of Canadian citizenship (I will discuss this in a chapter in a forthcoming edited book). On the other hand, consider formal noncitizens whose noncitizenship is activated by the state when they are made unable to work and unable to claim benefits (the case of refused asylum seekers in London is a case I develop in a chapter in another forthcoming edited book). While a person may be an active noncitizen in one state, he or she may also be a dormant citizen in a further state. This paper will examine how this citizenship also affects the nature of the noncitizenship experienced. In order to try to understand the obligations of a state towards active noncitizens, this paper will argue that it is necessary to adopt what it refers to as the ‘Dynamic Capabilities Approach’. The Dynamic Capabilities approach builds upon the Capabilities Approach developed particularly by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in order to take into account changing contexts and changing relationships. In doing this, it represents a new way to provide policy-relevant political theory of obligations of states towards individuals. This alters the way state obligations can be understood, and crucially, it provides a way to understand obligations towards noncitizens.