Peter J. Spiro's timely and highly accessible book encourages readers to reflect upon the contemporary meaning of citizenship. It could not have come at a better time. As I read it, I watched the collapse of the global financial system, which may really be just an aftershock of even more devastating global climate, food, and energy crises. At the same time, rather than coming together in a shared effort to respond to these multiple crises, Americans were entering the most polarizing phase of the presidential election. Sarah Palin is probably the first vice presidential candidate to suggest publicly that some parts of the country are “un-American,” but her words clearly reflected the sentiments of a significant portion of the U.S. public. Although it stirred some late-night television ridicule, Palin's remarks sparked little outrage or thoughtful and sustained public reflection about the broader implications of her statement. We should hope that the aftermath of the election will afford us a chance for such a dialogue on the nature of our national political community and its relation to the wider, global community. Beyond Citizenship should be required background reading for such a conversation.
Even before the current financial, environmental, and resource troubles began, it was clear that the state as we (think we) know it no longer exists, and is increasingly in competition with a range of other contenders for citizens' allegiances. Increased globalization has fundamentally altered the ability of national governments to manage conditions within their territorial borders. States were never fully able to manage the military security of their territory on their own, but with globalization their responsibilities to help provide social security for citizens has declined sharply. Nevertheless, the legal fiction of state sovereignty and the predominance of states in the global polity remain. This book draws readers' attention to questions of how we address these changing realities and their implications for community and social cohesion.
Inherent in the notion of citizenship—and indeed any collective identity—is the idea that some people can and should be excluded from one's own group. No identity is very meaningful if it fails to distinguish insiders from outsiders. But as Spiro emphasizes, the citizenship regime is a “vehicle of exclusion” (p. 115), contradicting liberalism's key tenet of inclusiveness. Such contradictions, he argues, are unsustainable over the long term. Here, he examines in detail the underlying logics and legal implications of citizenship policies with an eye toward encouraging new thinking about citizenship in an increasingly interdependent world.
Spiro begins his analysis of the citizenship regime with the puzzling observation that for all the heat generated over recent debates about U.S. immigration policy, nothing has been done to alter substantially the ways in which this country defines who gets to become a member of our national community. This fact, he argues, suggests that citizenship, as well as the state, are no longer as central to people's identities as it once was. The state is being transformed through processes of globalization that have shifted much of its traditional authority to transnational and subnational entities and heightened global interdependencies. Because of globalization, citizens are much freer to move wherever they wish. Those who are forced to migrate across national borders in search of a livelihood are able to visit more frequently and to otherwise maintain connections to communities back home. Diasporic communities in destination countries ease the pain of separation and reduce the need for immigrants to become integrated into the national communities in which they reside.
Spiro points to a variety of evidence of the declining (or at least changing) significance of the state and citizenship, such as the sharply declining rates of naturalization, rising instances and acceptance of dual citizenship, and reduced differentiation between citizens and noncitizens in regard to obligations such as taxes and military service. Transnational terrorist networks make national states less effective as guarantors of citizens' physical security. International law has helped secure the basic rights of U.S. (and other nations') citizens traveling overseas, resulting in substantial reductions in consular services to passport holders.
While the benefits of citizenship have lost value, noncitizens also face fewer costs for failing to adopt the citizenship status. It is now easier for immigrants to survive without formal standing in their countries of residence, in part because of the important role of remittances in the economies of many immigrant-sending countries. International migrants have powerful advocates in the governments of migrant-sending countries who wish to maintain these important revenue flows. Although many of these states are less able to provide direct support for their citizens' well-being, they can and do intervene to protect the rights of their citizens to find work and to live safely abroad.
This leads us to the question: “What becomes of citizenship after the state?” (p. 110). Spiro reviews and assesses major theoretical traditions in American conceptualizations of what it means to be American in his chapter on “American Defined.” Here, the arguments of the new nativists, the nationalists (both the conservative and liberal strands), and multiculturalists are examined for clues about how we might best respond to the changes we are witnessing to the “architecture of citizenship.” Spiro's analysis of the logic behind each tradition leads him to conclude that the multiculturalists, who argue for subordinating national identity to cultural diversity, are best positioned to help us address the contemporary challenges to citizenship.
This approach, like the others, however, is limited by its assumption that the national state will remain the most expansive level of social organization. Spiro argues that we need a way to “situate the national community among other communities, and to map the relationship of citizens to other forms of membership” (p. 135). In other words, as human identities become more salient than national ones for a variety of individual and social aims, we need to rethink traditional forms of belonging, where citizenship becomes “just another form of belonging” on a par with memberships in civic and other associations (p. 79). While some may dismiss these arguments as utopian, it is important to note that states are relative newcomers to the world, and that they have always undergone important transformations in their structures. Why should we think that they will continue in perpetuity as a privileged category of community?
Globalization has brought a decoupling of ideas and territory, and sociologists now speak of a “world culture” that reflects these core values as well as their inherent contradictions (see, e.g., Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology 1997; 103: 144–81). But states were not alone in building this global polity. Nongovernmental actors of all sorts helped reinforce different values and goals that have become part of a complex world culture (see John Boli and George Thomas, eds, Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations Since 1875, 1999). The interstate system has helped spread and reinforce liberal values, but the inconsistencies between liberal ideas of equality and democracy and illiberal practices of inequality and exclusion are reproduced. It is these hypocrisies that provide opportunities for many civil society groups to mobilize people across national borders in an effort to advance human interests over national ones. Groups like Amnesty International, the International Olympics Committee, and the International Sociological Association are among a growing population of transnational associations that unite people around values and interests that cannot be fully realized within the boundaries of national polities. Such associations have expanded dramatically in recent decades, in part because of the greater ease of international transport and communication. But while many readily acknowledge this trend, few have seriously considered how it influences the citizenship regime.
When we consider the work of many transnational associations, it is clear that nationality is not the only identity that generates altruism and self-sacrifice. In fact, globalization has meant that contemporary states are less and less capable of motivating sacrifice on the part of citizens. Mary Kaldor addresses this problem in greater detail, providing an interesting complement to Spiro's discussion (“Nationalism and Globalization,” Nations and Nationalism 2004; 10: 161–77). Activists who are passionate about protecting human rights or the environment are likely to feel more loyalty to others—regardless of nationality—who share their values than to compatriots who are indifferent or hostile to these core values. This is especially true when the policies of national governments directly contradict broader, human interests and values.
This is not to say that the national state and the institution of citizenship will be going away anytime soon. But it does mean that both institutions are changing, and Spiro's aim is to encourage new thinking about the future bases for community and solidarity. The expansion of transnational civil society plays a key role in facilitating the articulation and dissemination of new identities that extend beyond state boundaries and that provide a foundation for community that better addresses today's global reality. Scholars of global justice activism, such as Donatella della Porta, have demonstrated that transnational civil society projects have indeed helped generate new types of “flexible identities and multiple belongings” in response to the challenges posed by globalization (“Making the Polis: Social Forums and Democracy in the Global Justice Movement,” Mobilization 2005; 10: 73–94). Such reconceptualizations of community are essential for moving beyond citizenship to create new forms of social solidarity that can address the major global crises now unfolding.
