Transnational Citizenship and Migration (The Library of Contemporary Essays in Governance and Political Theory)

Transnational Citizenship is a puzzling concept if we think about citizenship as a relation between an individual, a state and the other citizens of that state. However, such a view of citizenship is no longer adequate in a world where states have become interdependent and where large numbers of individuals move across their borders. Responses of liberal democratic states to migration have created new statuses and rights of citizenship across international borders, multiple nationality is increasingly common and significant numbers of people engage in social and political practices of citizenship over long distances or participate locally without being recognized as citizens of the country where they reside.

This collection of mostly classic and some less well-known essays focuses on the historical question whether transnational citizenship is a genuinely new phenomenon and the normative question how it can be reconciled with principles of equal status and rights of citizens. The book opens with a introductory essay on the concept and the academic debates it has triggered. Its nineteen other chapters are grouped into five sections focusing on historical trends, institutional change, shifting boundaries, transnationalism from below and inter-state relations.

The book combines multiple disciplinary perspectives and sets the most important authors in dialogue with each other. It will provide very useful teaching material for courses on migration and citizenship in different academic disciplines at graduate and postgraduate level.

Rainer Baubock