Post-Nationalism & Denationalized Citizenship

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Assigned Reading

• Sasskia Sassen “Towards Post-National and Denationalized Citizenship” (15 pgs)

Suggested:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://tinyurl.com/na8jx3q).
• Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Human Rights: A Basic Handbook for UN Staff. (PDF) (glance over this)

Some Guiding Qs

1. Nationality vs. citizenship
2. According to Sassen, what are the two major conditions that are leading to possible transformations in conceptions of citizenship?
3. What are the “dimensions” of citizenship (beyond those described by Marshall)?
4. How have these conditions impacted/transformed citizenship?
5. Does a focus on “national” rights still apply in a global age?

Q1. Nationality vs. Citizenship

• Both associated w/ rise of nation-state
• Narrowest definition: legal relationship between individual and polity
• Citizenship: confined to the national dimension
• Defines relationship between individual to the state;
• e.g. American citizenship- defines my relationship to the state
• Nationality: refers to international legal dimension in the context of an interstate system
• E.g. I am American national when abroad

Who the state recognizes as citizen of state entails rights and responsibilities on individuals (and the state!)

Yasemin Soysal & Saskia Sassen

Yasemin Soysal

Saskia Sassen

Yasemin Soysal (1994), The Limits of Citizenship

National citizenship being superseded by new and diverse forms of local and regional belonging. Rights no longer exclusively enjoyed by national citizens residing in the nation-state granting their citizenship, but by permanent residence [in such states]. Such rights

• do not rely on the state (though they are implemented by it)
• rely on new discourse and praxis, a concept of universal personhood nested in a web of post-war international human rights norms and treaties

Process has been coupled with and has encouraged a conceptual evolution:

• rights separated from citizenship,
• identity separated from rights.

Post-war European migrants derived entitlements from their settled status, but they defined the content and spatial limits of their identity independently of it, and they situated it locally, regionally, nationally, or transnationally.

Q2. Two Major Conditions Transforming Citizenship

1. “...change in position and institutional features of national states since 1980s resulting from various forms of globalization.” (p1)
• Economic privatization and deregulation
• Human rights regime
2. “Emergence of multiple actors, groups, and communities partly strengthened by these transformations in the state and increasingly unwilling to automatically identify with a nation as represented by the state.” (p1)
• Focus is on the “emergence of locations of citizenship outside the confines of the national state.” (see next slide)

Q2. Two Major Conditions Transforming Citizenship cont’d

“...emergence of locations of citizenship outside the confines of the national state.”

• National state no longer the exclusive site for enacting claims-making.
• i.e. state no longer the organization from which we attain formal status, protection of rights, citizenship practices, or the experience of collective identities and solidarities.
• Shift within states on citizenship
• shifting from “formal citizenship” to “effective citizenship”
• Increasingly allow national courts to use international instruments (e.g. human rights)

Q3. Dimensions of “citizenship”

• Legal status (nationality)
• Protection & Possession of Rights
• Political activity
• Voting rights and obligations
• Collective identity and sentiment
• Belonging
• Cultural citizenship
• Psychological dimensions and ties of identification
• Economic citizenship (rights to work)

Let’s see if these aspects of citizenship are being challenged.

And if they are, does that mean a weakening of the nation state & “citizenship”?

Legal Status and Nationality

• Dual nationality is becoming more and more common.
• Historically, dual nationality was incompatible with absolute authority of the state over its territory and its nationals (Brubaker, 1989 via Sassen).
• See countries recognizing dual citizenship.

Protection & Possession of Rights vis-a-vis Weakening Social State

Increased penetration of economic globalization means states have less ability to protect citizens; has lead to

• declining citizenship entitlements (withdrawal of state from such entitlements)
• thinning of [Marshall’s] social rights may mean thinning of individual’s loyalties to the state
• similarly, state may not see citizen loyalty as that important (when state doesn’t need as many people to fight for it)

Rise of supranational organizations such as NAFTA, WTO, World Bank, EU, IMF -- limits the power of the state to act

Protection & Possession of Rights: Political Participation and Voting in US

• Ex-convicts and loss of right to vote
• Historically, many states allowed long-time residents (even if they were not citizens) some form of voting (e.g. in local, municipal elections)
• 1776-1926: 40 states allowed noncitizens some form of voting (local, state, and even federal)
• 1926: Arkansas last state to outlaw noncitizen voting
• 1996: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibited noncitizens from voting in federal elections.

Protection & Possession of Rights: Political Participation - EU, Maastricht, and Voting

Maastricht Treaty (1992)

• Euro
• EU Citizenship
• free movement of EU citizens in Schengen area
• “right to vote and to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament and in municipal elections in the Member State in which they reside, under the same conditions as nationals of that State”
• Also see voting rights third-country nationals

Collective Identity and Sentiment - Identity and Citizenship Increasingly Differentiated

• Cultural pluralist / multi-cultural paradigms challenge unitary identities and loyalty to single national state
• Localized citizenship
• Globalized cities economic actors
• Transnational citizenship and identities - cross-border struggles
• Human rights, environmental, women’s rights, labor rights
• Connection people feel toward different groups in civil society (that are NOT nationally bounded)

Two Examples

1. Unauthorized immigrants:
• Their participation in civil society makes them default members
• They also have certain rights
• Important group that contributes to home country economy as well
2. Authorized, yet unrecognized:
• Mothers and housewives - groups not typically recognized in traditional political discourse of “citizenship” (not usually viewed as a political interest group)

Post-National or Denationalized

Post-national - outside the traditional confines of the national

• EU

Denationalized - transformation of national citizenship (under the impact of globalization and some other dynamics)

• Still connected to the national

Post-National or Denationalized (Deterritorialized)

Denationalized - transformation of national citizenship

• Resulting from globalization and other international dynamics
• Still connected to state and national, but altered
• Strengthening of the civil rights
• Granting of “rights” to foreign actors (foreign firms, markets, investors, etc.)
• limits citizens’ rights in relation to foreign firms, markets

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TransCanada Sues US - Keystone XL

TransCanada filed suit through NAFTA when Obama administration cancelled Keystone XL pipeline project

• Despite fervent opposition to project
• US government decision on project

Trump reinstated project and lawsuit suspended.

How do you think less powerful states fare?

Sassen - National and International Frames

Sassen argues that an exclusive focus on “national” handicaps our analysis in global age BUT does not see it as either/or;

• changes in national citizenship also includes rising importance of global standards that may enlarge rights-- e.g. human rights

What do you think?

Are we in a post-national world where national citizenship is declining in importance?

Assigned Reading

• Hansen, Randall. (2008) “The poverty of postnationalism: Citizenship, immigration, and the new Europe”, Theory and Society, 38(1):1-24. January 2008.

Positive vs. Negative Rights

Positive rights: rights to be subjected to an action of another person or group; a right that requires another to do something.

• Right to an attorney-- state or someone MUST supply one

Negative rights: rights NOT to be subjected to an action of another person or group; a right that requires another to NOT stand in the way.

• Right to free speech-- no one should contravene individual from speaking

1. According to Hansen, does the EU and European citizenship undermine national citizenship? Why or why not?
2. Hansen argues that neither international norms such as human rights or supranational bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) challenge the nation state or national citizenship. Explain his reasoning.
3. Hansen makes a point that and all encompassing conception of citizenship is pretty modern and that various rights were often provided by various actors through most of human history. Nevertheless, he argues that there are certain rights for which national citizenship is the sole basis for certain rights. Explain to what right he refers and how such rights are important.
4. Are you convinced by Hansen’s arguments? Why?

The end… :)