Towards Global Citizenship Practice

The chapter defines citizenship as an organising principle that frames citizenship practice constitutionally. The move towards citizenship as a practice allows for an analytical distinction between the universal and the particular dimensions of citizenship without losing the constructive tension between them. Now research on citizenship practice can distinguish analytically between normatively conceived constitutive elements (i.e. the individual, the polity and the practice linking these two), on the one hand, and practically derived historical elements (i.e. rights, access and identity/belonging) on the other. Notably, it is the practice that ultimately establishes who enjoys which rights, on what cultural grounds, and through which political, economic and social means. The chapter notes changes of citizenship practice with regard to the diversity of actorship and the increasingly global context of citizenship practice. It demonstrates how citizenship practice which unfolds on different sites of contestation qualifies the historical elements of citizenship and argues that if the quality of citizenship is constituted through citizenship practice, a significant and stable shift in the balance between the three constitutive elements of citizenship may be indicative for a critical juncture in the historical configuration of citizenship. This may allow for overcoming the ethical inside/outside dilemma of citizenship which has forged 20th century thinking about the concepts of 'community' and 'citizenship' in both international relations theories (IR) and, there, especially, security studies and in the field of citizenship studies.