JERARQUÍAS DE CIUDADANÍA EN EL NUEVO ORDEN GLOBAL

Abstract

In Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging published in 2000, Alastair  Davidson  and I showed  that globalisation  and migration  throw up serious challenges  for citizenship.  This article goes further, by examining  changes resulting  from the  emergence  of  a  new  constellation  of  international  politics,  which  I  refer  to  as  the hierarchical nation-state system. The bipolar system of the Cold War is being superseded by a new dichotomy  between North and South, but with a single super-power  dominating both.  For  the  first  time  in  history,  most  of  the  world’s  people  have  the  legal  status  of citizenship and live in polities with the legal form of democratic nation-states.  Although all nation-states  are formally equal in status, there is in reality a hierarchy with regard to such factors as international  law, rules on trade, monopoly of the means of mass destruction and influence  on  global  governance.  This  makes  it  necessary  to  move  from  the  notion  of differentiated and contradictory citizenship that we outlined in 2000 to a notion of hierarchical citizenship, based on sharp differences in the degree of empowerment and rights that citizenship of  various  types  of states  confers.  Hierarchical  citizenship  helps  to shape  the rights  and life-chance  of different  groups  at both the national  and international  levels.  It is closely linked to discourses on the naturalness  of violence and chaos in the South, which helps to legitimate Northern dominance.