View article

This chapter surveys the major challenges, opportunities, and insights of scholarship on citizenship and migration in the so-called non-Western world in order to move the field of citizenship studies forward by critically reevaluating our assumptions about the concept of citizenship, its associated rights, and the lived realities of citizenship practices in various parts of the world. The study of citizenship in various non-Western contexts provides a distinctive lens through which we can analyze its contradictions. Rather than begin with the assumption that citizenship is universal, democratic, and inclusive, research in this area highlights how citizenship—as a legal status, symbol of national and/or ethnic identity, institution, and practice—is contingent. The chapter explores how technologies of citizenship create hierarchies of citizens and noncitizens that prioritize meso-level membership over individual rights, that extend …