Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration : From Sovereign Presence to Contingent Trace

A sustained engagement with the increasingly complicated global, transnational and postmodern nature of citizenship Many people see citizenship in a globalised world in terms of binaries: inclusion/exclusion, past/present, particularism/universalism. Aoileann Ní Mhurchú points out the limitations of these positions and argues that we need to be able to take into account the people who get caught between these traditional categories. Using critical resources found in poststructural, psychoanalytic and postcolonial thought, Ní Mhurchú thinks in new ways about citizenship, drawing on a range of thinkers including Kristeva, Bhabha and Foucault. Taking a distinctive theoretical approach, she shows how citizenship is being reconfigured beyond these categories. Key Features Provides a new framework for thinking about the limitations of current citizenship scholarship Links existing insights on intergenerational migration with new literature on citizenship through empirical research Develops a new way of thinking about the increasingly discontinuous and fragmented nature of citizenship through the concept of trace Contributes to the growing interdisciplinary field of critical citizenship studies (CCS), which is exploring new forms of citizenship in a globalised world Aoileann Ní Mhurchú is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research is located at the intersection of three areas: citizenship studies, international migration and contemporary political and philosophical thought. Few studies rethink citizenship with the creativity, imagination, and nuance of this book. Aoileann Ní Mhurchú investigates the politics of citizenship in relation to the struggles of intergenerational migrants, and reveals the value of seemingly fragile, impermanent and transient forms of political subjectivity. Highly recommended. - Peter Nyers, McMaster University This book builds on the challenges posed by recent critical analyses of citizenship. It shows not only that many contemporary forms of citizenship exceed national and territorial boundaries but, more significantly, resist the conventional opposition between claims to particular citizenships and claims to a common humanity. It does so by treating citizenship as both process and experience, especially in relation to intergenerational migration. It is a compelling and provocative intervention. - R.B.J Walker, University of Victoria, Canada, and PUB- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil An ambitious contribution to ‘critical citizenship studies’ – where the author herself places the work alongside the oeuvre of Étienne Balibar, Engin Isin and RBJ Walker, the book’s main intellectual influences – shifting our thinking back to the ontological foundations of ‘citizen’ ... the book will have achieved its highest aim if all those working on migration and citizenship from various disciplinary perspectives take account of and engage with the challenge of understanding ‘ambiguous’ forms of citizenship. - Chris Moreh, Northumbria University, Sociology Acknowledgements Abbreviations Translations Introduction 1. Exploring The Citizenship Debate: The Sovereign Citizen-Subject 2. A Lens: The 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum 3. Trapped in the Citizenship Debate: Sovereign Time and Space 4. Interrogating Sovereign Politics: An Alternative Citizen-Subject 5. Challenging the Citizenship Debate: Beyond State Sovereign Time and Space 6.Traces rather than Spaces of Citizenship: Retheorising the Politics of Citizenship Conclusion Bibliography. Citizenship is widely understood in binary statist terms: inclusion/exclusion, past/present, with the emphasis on how globalization brings such binaries into focus and exacerbates them. This book highlights the limitations of these positions and of current debate, and explores the possibility that citizenship is being reconfigured in contemporary political life beyond binary state oriented categories