Citizenship and Globalization

Citizenship is a legal formality that proves whether an individual exists in a social realm. While this may also be considered a right, it thus gives privileges and imposes obligations to an individual in the society. This means, citizenship gives a person his or her identity and membership as a social being. When border in the world is gradually blurring, does citizenship even matter? In a border-less world, does man still need the legal and social right attached with being a citizen?

In our modern world, an individual's identity is defined by a piece of paper: his birth certificate. After a child is born, the legal parents of a child register with government his or her record of birth, which indicates the child's nationality or citizenship. If not registered, a child is automatically rendered legally and physically non-existent. Hence, citizenship is only but a of recognition or honor that makes somebody a "real person" in the eyes of the society, thus, is a significant milestone of his being a social individual. Without the title "citizen," one is then considered a no man-no identity or social root! But, what if an individual decided to change his citizenship in the future?

Citizenship has many uses. It not only gives a person his individual identity but membership and belonging to the society as well. Within this concept, the idea of border comes in. According to Tétreault and Lipschutz (pp. 94), borders or boundaries are essential component of a state that is fundamental to maintain an ordered and disciplined social life of people. In some respect, borders help in the maintenance of social institutions and the consent we give them. When a person is considered a citizen, let us say of the United States, he is automatically entitled to the privileges any legal citizens of that land ought to have. The privileges he will get include labor wages, security benefits, protection and even the right to suffrage or vote. Otherwise, surely he gets nothing except for legal squabbles!

The definition of citizenship is evolving. Usually the meaning changes or reflects various old and emerging world view of this legal right or title. Peter Riesenberg in his book, Citizenship in the Western Tradition: From Plato to Rousseau traces how far and wide the concept of citizenship has grown and evolved over the years; and, he noted that it is people's notion that should eventually reflect these meanings. He said that in the early times, Athenian society is the only such recipient of this legal title. Over the years, there was a shift in the meaning from being a legal formality, citizenship thus became a symbol of one's individual and communal identity. Riesenberg pointed out the dramatic changes too as to how time has helped shaped this meaning. As the meaning of citizenship change, it is people's view about citizenship that is slow to adapt to these changes.

On one hand, the book edited by French scholar Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy, which contains essays written by scholars define citizenship in the frame of a democratic condition. The collection is tied with only one quest: determine the meaning of citizenship that entails not to homogenize citizenship.

Yet among the most interesting work that helped contribute to finding a better meaning of citizenship was documented in the Journal of Politics and was conducted through the Trans-Atlantic collaboration of Pamela Conover, Ivor Crewe and Donald Searing. In a focus group that they held, the researchers examined people's basic understanding of the concept of citizenship, rights, duties and civic identities in the US and Great Britain.

The significant difference showed that in the US, citizenship is marked by competition and individualism while in the Great Britain, however, citizenship is viewed more as a shared heritage that is constantly at odds with individuality. For Americans, citizenship is an obligation that restricts freedom. The British, on the other hand, viewed citizenship more as a social responsibility. In the British's view of citizenship, it implies that individual identity may be disregarded in favor of collective one while Americans' draw the distinction between its national identity from their identity as citizens.

In their seminal book Global Politics as if People Mattered, Tétreault and Lipschutz mine into the power of people that is continuously challenged by the complex interplay of social structures, to make a difference to the world. They believe that real people power only happened when there is collective and dynamic interplay of people in the world.

According to them, social individual is a potential agent that contributes to the global politics. To be effective and to play their role in the world, an individual should be able to carve out "spheres of autonomy of his own" in a strict social structure (Tétreault and Lipschutz, pp. 16). In such situation, national sovereignty will face extinction or become void and non-existent. Together with globalization or a borderless society, the relevance of citizenship is then challenged as one of those social structures which subject an individual to strict social regimentation.

In a globalizing world, economist Joseph Stiglitz noted the existence of the "closer integration of the countries and people of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and to people across borders." James Mittelman meanwhile underscored the nature of globalization as "market-induced, policy-driven and led process." When these two concepts are combined, we see a world that is touted to be very competitive and challenging to the social individual.

Now enters in the picture the concept of borders. As fundamental as it is to maintain an orderly and disciplined social life, borders are used to maintain power. Thomas Hobbes here may be quoted as saying: "The sovereign rules inside no one rules outside." In our times, however, borders may soon vanish, especially in a world that has embraced globalization. Borders are produced and maintained by power but are also blurring and dissolving because of how power tries to maintain them and how the less powerful tries to evade them. As the world grow more diverse, multicultural, the more that there would be more who will try to constantly construct them and destroy them (pp. 104).

So where do we go from here? The citizenship of a person or his membership to his nation will soon vanish as global communities shrink due to globalization. Globalization can then act as a catalyst to spur the dynamics of social structures that will hone and harness the social individual. As a result, a new social individual emerges to assert his role in this global village. In turn, the new social individual sheds his contractual existence, or his citizenship to his land in order to exercise his free will and find a niche to be effective and useful in the world.

Soon, the new social being's citizenship belong to the world as borders fade. The power is not handled by the only few people, but by new social individual. These new individual will exercise rights and perform duties for the world, not his nation. The new citizens no longer owe much to their land, but to the welfare of humanity in general.