The language of citizenship has, in recent years, been mobilized by feminists to articulate a wide range of claims and demands. The notions of economic, political, social, cultural, sexual/ bodily, and intimate citizenship, for example, have all been developed and explored in terms of their normative potential and their actual realization.
In Europe, in particular, there has been a strong steer from research funders and policy makers towards research agendas which address the question of citizenship in the context of increasingly diverse and multicultural societies. But, can the concept of citizenship encompass the transformations that feminist politics seek? What are the restrictions and exclusions of contemporary forms and practices of citizenship? How does the concept of citizenship deal with power, inequality, and difference? What are the problems with framing our desires and visions for the future in terms of citizenship in a globalizing world of migration, mobility, armed conflict, economic crisis and climate change? Does the concept of citizenship restrict our imaginations and limit our horizons within nation-state formations? Can it ever really grasp the complexity of our real and longed-for attachments to communities, networks, friends and loved ones? Is it able to embrace the politics of embodiment and of our relationships with the non-human world? How have feminists historically and cross-culturally imagined and prefigured a world beyond citizenship? Is a feminist, queer or global citizenship thinkable, or should we find a new language for new forms of belonging? Continue reading →