Effects of Globalization on Citizenship

• Under the impact of globalization individuality becomes

the catchword and national boundaries start to matter
less. Consequently, these developments challenge
traditional conceptions of citizenship based on affiliation
with a territorial nation-state.
• Analysis of the effects of globalization on the constitution
of political communities and their membership, i.e. the
question of citizenship is important as the exploring of
key questions concerning multiplicity, marginalization,
inclusion and exclusion.
• The emergence of the new and expanded forms of
citizenship that are evolving in response to globalization
needs to be taken into consideration.
 Effects of Globalization on Citizenship
(Contd.)
• Globalization has challenged the nation-state as the
only source of authority over citizenship and
democracy.
• It has systematically interrogated the themes
surrounding modern citizenship-territoriality, identity,
belongingness and allegiance.
• In this extremely complex and dynamic world
globalization does not imply that ‘the local’ and ‘the
national’ are subordinate to ‘the global’. Rather, it
underlines the deepening as well as the broadening of
the political process in the sense that local, national and
global events constantly interact and result in systematic
 From Keynesianism to Washington
Consensus
• As a response to the Great Depression, Keynesianism proposed
that the state should intervene in the economy to promote
economic efficiency, political freedom and social justice.
• Largely based on Keynesianism, the welfare state became the
predominant model in large part of the globe in the mid-
twentieth century.
• But in the late 1970s the economic crisis and the
disintegration of the Keynesian paradigm led to the adoption
of free market policies guided by neo-liberalism. With this, the
contemporary phase of globalization has begun.
• The Washington consensus became the underlying framework
for contemporary (economic) globalization in the 1990s.
 Contemporary Globalization and its
Consequences
• Contemporary globalization is known as the intensive or
deepening phase, in the sense that there is an intensification of
the integration between different parts of the world.
• Scores of processes and developments in the second half of the
twentieth century facilitated the emergence of this global
interdependence, namely the cold war; the spread of
international trade and the transnational character of modern
business organizations; technological innovations, especially
the information and communication revolution; politico-
ideological factors, such as the spread of Western-liberal political
values or liberal democracy due to the collapse of the socialist
states; the emergence of Islam as a transnational political creed;
and common political and environmental problems such as
terrorism, acid rain, ozone depletion and global warming.
Beyond the Marshallian Citizenship Trilogy
• The Marshallian theory of citizenship has become highly inadequate in
attending to the new categories-immigrants, guest workers, refugees and
other mobile groups-that constitute a pivotal feature of the contemporary
world.
• These new forms go beyond the Marshallian citizenship trilogy of civil,
political and social rights, and entail mobility citizenship (concerned with
the rights and responsibilities of visitors to other places and cultures),
minority citizenship, cultural citizenship (involving the right to cultural
participation), ecological citizenship (involving rights and responsibilities
of the earth citizen), diasporic citizenship (concerned with the rights and
duties of diasporas), and cyber citizenship (involving the rights and duties
of netizens).
• As against the Marshallian citizenship trilogy, organized around
membership to the nation-state, these alternative conceptions could be
considered the ‘citizenship of flow’ (Urry, 2000), which are concerned with
the causes and consequences of the flows of migrants, visitors, cultures
 Citizenship in Economic Terms
• There has been significant change in the relationship
between the citizen and the state in view of the fact that
neo-liberalism as a public philososphy is based on the claim
that the market is better than the state at distributing public
services. Consequently, it marks a shift in emphasis from the
public to the private and from the state to the market.
• Thus, it conceives of citizenship in economic terms; citizens
are transformed into consumers, looking for the party or
programme that promises to augment their market
positions.
• In the words of Michael Walzer, they need the state but have
no moral relation to it, or they simply do not develop any
attachment to it.
 Property Owners Given Primacy Over the
Participatory Rights of Citizens
• As the neo-liberal model rejects the idea that
citizenship confers a status independent of economic
standing in a society, protection of the rights of
property owners is given primacy over the participatory
rights of citizens, both nationally and globally.
• This leads to a major shift away from public citizenship,
directly provided by the nation-state and based on
compulsory taxation, insurance and participation
rights, to some kind of consumer citizenship, provided
by many diverse institutions, nation-states, global
organizations, NGOs, consumer organizations and the
media.
 Post-Keynesian Economic Policies
• As states adopt neo-liberal or market-friendly policies under
pressure from the dynamics of global capital, they go for post-
Keynesian economic policies- privatization and labour market
deregulation, low public expenditure on social goods, and low
levels of taxation. This has two major consequences for
citizenship:
i. First, a state cannot protect its citizens from the fluctuating
effects of the global economy over which it does not have
effective control.
ii. Second, Marshallian social rights are dismantled as the welfare
state comes under increasing strain in the age of neo-liberalism.
The inability of the state to ensure the social rights of its citizens
creates new scales of inequality, and makes civil and political
rights incapable of providing meaning to citizens’ lives.
 Erosion of State Legitimacy
• The above mentioned two factors have resulted in an erosion of state
legitimacy or erosion of the committed adherence to or allegiance of
its citizens, and a decline in social solidarity and citizenship.
• These are manifested in increasing voting apathy, distrust of
politicians, passivity and withdrawal into the private sphere, and the
decline of the public sphere.
• The general feeling of being disconnected or rootless on the part of
citizens produces a greater sensitivity to particularistic identities
based on nationalism, regionalism, tribalism, etc.
• As neo-liberal economic globalization leads to an increase in
inequality and insecurity within countries as well as between them,
there is an intensification of ‘globalization from below’,- resistance
and political movements demanding ‘inclusive citizenship’ (Kabeer,
2005) by challenging exclusionary practices and the way the voices of
people are silenced.
 Global Vs. Local
• Cross-border cultural flows are transforming the politics
of identity. When people everywhere are exposed to
the values of other cultures, geographically fixed
national identities get increasingly eroded.
• Consequently, while there are some signs pointing
towards the emergence of a global culture based on
universal cultural symbols, there is also an awareness of
difference vis-à-vis the diversity in lifestyles and value
orientations.
• Thus cultural globalization has a pluralizing impact on
identity formation, creating and recreating a variety of
new identities associated with gender, race, ecology,
Global Civil Society and Cyberspace
• These new identities find concrete expression in global civil society and
cyberspace. These two agents have emerged as alternative public
spaces for citizen activity as the official public space has shrunk.
• The new public spaces have led to participatory citizenship spilling
beyond state boundaries. Global civil society provides its citizens the
required space for collective action in various forms such as unions,
NGOs, ethnic associations, demonstrations and social movements
(women’s movement or gay liberation movement) and people’s
summits (like the World Social Forum).
• Global civil society and the Internet have contributed to the emergence
of unbounded notions of citizenship. The Internet has greatly
influenced political consciousness, and has created a specific identity
‘netizen’ or a new discursive or interactive form of citizenship-’cyber-
citizenship.
Global Civil Society and Cyberspace (contd.)
• It is based on unmediated dialogue, information exchange and
networking around the world, and thus challenges the idea of a
state-centric world.
• It provides democratic space for the expression of alternative
and contesting voices that transcend national boundaries (for
instance through blogs, or communities on websites like
facebook), as well as representational space for agencies to
initiate debates on critical issues.
• Consequently, these debates form collectivities and forge new
solidarities through online petitions, online signature campaigns
and online mobilizations- e.g. Bakul Foundation, a non-profit
organization in Orissa, which promotes voluntarism for
community development. It has formed a common mind or
thinking and forged mutual solidarity among people across the
 Virtual Migration, Virtual Communities and
Horizontal Communication
• Blogs are reshaping the landscape of citizenship.
New understandings, commonalities, frames of
meaning, and thereby identities are formed
through virtual migration and virtual communities,
that is , without direct contact between people.
• Through the process of disintermediation,
individuals and groups express themselves directly
and not through representatives or intermediaries.
• The Internet creates horizontal communication
links between citizens, and thus challenges existing
hierarchies.
 Virtual Migration, Virtual Communities
(Contd.)
• Control over the means of communication is now in
the hands of an increasing number of people, and
political disintermediation and declining respect for
representative institutions (due to their inability to
deliver) are producing a ‘critical citizenship’, where
citizens want to engage directly in public discourse,
national as well as global.
• Thus, a great challenge for states is reconciling
contemporary demands for direct participation and
transparency with traditional representative
democracy, based on secrecy and control of