Can Noncitizen Power Shape Global Governance?

A person is in a noncitizen relationship with a State or the multi-State system insofar as they must live their life and act politically despite the institutions of that State or that system. Being in a noncitizen relationship does not make someone abject or dependent, but it does mean that they must struggle to realise their agency in some dimension. Noncitizenship thereby also gives rise to otherwise invisible insights into the effective function of politico-legal systems. I argue that evidence-based and sustainable global policy development needs the insights of people who experience core structures as noncitizens; and that insofar as people experience particular systems as noncitizens, they can bring a unique power to global policy discussion. This paper examines the extent to which noncitizen power currently affects, and could affect, global governance, with a focus particularly (but not exclusively) on the potential role of ‘global civil society’ mechanisms in enabling noncitizen power. First, and by way of scene-setting, I present how the founding documents of the United Nations have understood civil society participation, as well as the new framing of ‘global civil society’ of the 1990s which drove, for example, the opening of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to new Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) members, with limited consideration of noncitizen power. It will also present efforts to sculpt spaces for civil society contribution, particularly through the UN’s democratization agendas, and in key moments of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Climate Charter (CoP). Second, and based on extensive research into the UN’s 2018 Global Compact for Migration, I show that people with direct experience of the sharpest edges of the migration governance infrastructure had to struggle against those very mechanisms order to bring their insights into core governance discussions. This made the inclusion of crucial noncitizen insights dependent upon, and mediated through, people who could engage qua citizen. That is, the structures producing noncitizenship were the same structures which impeded noncitizen power. Third, through a study of the process which produced the UN’s 2024 Pact for the Future, and preliminary results of interviews with civil society actors engaged in these processes, this paper will consider the potential for noncitizen power in global governance moving forward. The UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that the world needed a UN 2.0. It was hoped that the process toward the Pact for the Future would provide room for new forms of civil society engagement. Instead, global civil society actors describe a closing of civic space within the UN, a trend which it is argued is also seen in its Member States. For example, initial evidence suggests that some States have used critique of the lack of noncitizen voices to restrict global civic space tout court. This has led to push-back from global civil society actors and new suggestions for mechanisms which would facilitate better conditions for real civil society engagement in UN processes. I examine the extent to which these admit noncitizen power.