There is no doubt that citizenship has also
emerged as a major theme connecting policy
domains that range from welfare, education,
and labor markets to international relations
and migration. Citizenship connects these
because it brings within its orbit three
fundamental issues: how the boundaries of
membership within a polity and between
polities should be defined (extent); how the
benefits and burdens of membership should
be allocated (content); and how the ‘thickness’
of identities of members should be
comprehended and accommodated (depth).
As a simple matter of law, nationality is the
primary axis by which peoples are classified
and distributed in polities across the globe.
However, the continuing rise of new forms of
cultural politics has challenged modern understandings
of belonging and has contributed to
rethinking the meaning of citizenship. The
reality of immigration and emigration, the formation
of such supranational and transnational
bodies as the European Union (EU),
the formation of new successor states, the
movement of refugee populations, and the
codification of international human rights
norms has prompted increasing recognition
of citizenship as a transnational matter. The
growing incidence of plural nationality
exemplifies the transnational dimension of citizenship not only as an object of policy
but also increasingly as a source and marker
of social identity. The difficulty in this
growing recognition is that it has arisen
through the interaction of citizenship rules
that states, acting as sovereign agents, have
adopted, but whose effects reach into the
domestic jurisdictions of other states and
invest individuals with binding affiliations
to two or more states. This difficulty is compounded
for nations that have seen themselves
as ethnically or racially homogenous.
Moreover, the increasing importance of
cities in organizing and shaping cultural,
social, symbolics, and economic flows has
also prompted a recognition of their role in
fostering citizenship. Thus, the sovereign
state is no longer the only locus of citizenship.
Yet very few citizenship laws are
enacted either above or below national
levels (e.g. EU). So while negotiations for
citizenship take place above and below the
state, laws are still enacted at national levels.
Hence national trajectories and practices still
constitute important issues in citizenship
studies despite the fact that citizenship is now
negotiated at a variety of levels and sites.