Citizenship redux: Why citizenship remains pivotal in a globalizing world

Abstract

Citizenship reemerged as a topic of major academic and policy interest from the 1990s, and as extensive and passionate as that debate has been, Saskia Sassen's commentary illustrates why we have not fully unlocked its importance. Citizenship, in Sassen's thought-provoking argument, articulates the relationship of the individual and the state, and the national and the international. The articulation here is, as I read it, both in the meaning of, first, “makes sense of,” conceptualizes and gives voice to a set of relationships, and second, facilitates the facile movement between different parts. In this latter sense, citizenship is the “joint” or nexus that articulates between social and political parts, much in the way (metaphorically speaking) our bodies have articulating joints.

Citation

Jacobson, D. (2009), "Citizenship redux: Why citizenship remains pivotal in a globalizing world", Davis, D.E. and Go, J. (Ed.) Political Power and Social Theory (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 281-286. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-8719(2009)0000020016