Towards a Critical Noncitizenship Studies

Citizenship is often presumed to be the only way in which a person can have a recognised relationship with a State, while at the same time it is assumed that everyone has access to an appropriate citizenship. The international State system functions, in this view, to allocate rights and securities to everyone through their citizenship. Where someone is without citizenship, it is presumed that allocation of citizenship is both necessary and sufficient to remedy their situation. While it may be crucial to promote access to citizenship for those without citizenship and desiring it, this is not enough. A growing body of scholarship is challenging this understanding. Rather than seeing citizenship as the only form of relationship, it suggests that there are two forms of relationship: citizenship and noncitizenship. That is, rather than there being a binary: citizenship and the absence of citizenship (often denoted by the hyphenated ‘non-citizenship’), there are two relationships which may even pertain simultaneously. For example, a person may have formal citizenship of a State, but at the same time have to live despite that State’s politico-legal structures. In such a case, obtaining formal citizenship is not enough to ensure the rights normally presumed to be citizen rights. On the other hand, it is inadequate to describe someone who is ‘stateless’ (that is, not recognised as a citizen by any State) as merely without citizenship and so without any relationship with a State. Such a person may have a strong relationship with a particular State or States, even if this one is marked by the need to live despite its structures. Such a person may be in a noncitizen relationship with that State or those States. This school of thought sees both citizenship and noncitizenship as core to the way in which our politico-legal systems function, and so the focus on citizenship alone is a misdirection. Indeed, using the blanket allocation of citizenship to address rightslessness would risk masking underlying exclusions which may in turn be driving the lack of citizenship. It is on this basis that political theorists have argued that we need to understand and analyse noncitizenship on its own terms, rather than merely as a negation of citizenship. What is the nature of the relationship between people insofar as they experience noncitizenship, and the States in which they live? What is the nature of their relationship to the international community? And what is the lived experience of the presence, or absence, of these relationships? Some of the burgeoning literature in this area has included work by the Chairs of both the Section and its Panels. For example: Theorising Noncitizenship (Tonkiss and Bloom, Routledge 2015); Noncitizenism (Bloom, Routledge 2017); Understanding Statelessness (Bloom, Tonkiss, and Cole, Routledge 2018); Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Bloom and Kingston, Manchester 2021); Noncitizen Power (Bloom, Bloomsbury 2023). Building on this growing interest in noncitizenship as a field of social scientific enquiry, this section aims to develop a new research agenda for a critical noncitizenship studies. This agenda will centre the study of noncitizenship across disciplinary perspectives and levels of analysis. Panels will be multidisciplinary in character, bringing together perspectives from political theory and law, with multiple strands of empirical research rooted in political, sociological and international studies. The section will lead directly to the publication of an edited volume comprised of chapters based on papers from across its panels. This volume will set the agenda for critical noncitizenship studies as a multi-disciplinary field. Overview of proposed panels: Panel 1: Noncitizenship and the State Chair: Katie Tonkiss, Aston University, UK Citizenship has long been constructed as the primary relationship between an individual and a State. However, this does not capture a range of relationships between individuals and States which cannot be sufficiently captured by citizenship. This panel invites papers which examine these relationships and which explore how individuals’ lived experience in States is shaped by a diversity of political commitments, regimes, and positionalities. Panel 2: Noncitizenship Beyond the State Chair: Katja Swider, Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands The noncitizen relationship also reaches beyond the State. On the one hand, it is necessary to understand legal political relationships with both Regional and Global Organisations. On the other hand, the regional and global memberships that individuals have can change the function of their citizenships and noncitizenships. This panel invites papers looking at noncitizenship from a range of perspectives reaching beyond the State. Panel 3: Noncitizenship and the Performance of Citizenship Chair: Victoria (Vicki) Finn, University of Oslo, Norway This panel will focus on the rules, regulations and procedures through which (non)citizenship regimes are built, including setting the boundaries of the demos and voting rights. It invites papers that reflect on the implications of these topics on how we conceive of noncitizenship, especially how these cut across the relationships between citizenship and noncitizenship at multiple levels that construct the parameters of inclusion and exclusion, which ultimately shape democratic participation. Panel 4: Noncitizenship and the Disruption of the Public/Private Distinction Chair: Ash Stokoe, University of Birmingham, UK Noncitizenship provides an important angle for disrupting the presumption that a clear distinction can be drawn between the public and the private realm. This can be seen most clearly where the most intimate and private elements of a person’s life (e.g. relating to their romantic partner, or their gender) can constrain the way in which they relate to the State, producing important forms of noncitizenship. This panel invites papers approaching the disruption of the public/private distinction. Panel 5: Noncitizenship and Economic Memberships Chair: Hazim Mohamed, University of Toronto, Canada The concept of noncitizenship expresses a relationship that is often described in political terms. But noncitizens are also workers belonging to different economic groups and embedded in different sectors of the economy that affect both their social mobility as well as their relationship to political dynamics. This panel invites papers which examine the impact of social and economic class on the opportunities available to noncitizens and the ways in which they perceive, negotiate, and mobilize their membership.