Week 6 Cinalli and Jacobsen The Racialization of Muslims - Empirical Studies of Islamophobia in Migration, - Borders - and - Citizenship

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From Borders to Seams: The Role

of Citizenship
Manlio Cinalli and David Jacobson
1 Introduction
In the literature on citizenship the issue of borders is little discussed,
even though borders have been at the core of the emergence of citizen-
ship and, more broadly, are at the center of politics itself. The traditional
politics of borders has been an essential mechanism for determining
membership in the civil polity, of who is inside and who is alien or
Copyright © 2019. Springer International Publishing AG. All rights reserved.
foreign. But the role of borders for politics and for citizenship is even
more profound than questions of membership. With the emergence of
civil polities, humans progressively shifted away from social organization
based on kinship, where the boundaries of community (feudal, tribal,
patrimonial and the like) and status therein were determined by birth.
Instead, in principle in civil society blood descent lessened as the basis of
M. Cinalli (*)
Sciences Po, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
e-mail: manlio.cinalli@sciencespo.fr
D. Jacobson
Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
© The Author(s) 2020 27
M. Ambrosini et al. (eds.), Migration, Borders and Citizenship, Migration, Diasporas
and Citizenship, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22157-7_2
Ambrosini, M., Cinalli, M., & Jacobson, D. (Eds.). (2019). Migration, borders and citizenship : Between policy and public
spheres. Springer International Publishing AG.
Created from sciences-po on 2023-11-03 09:27:54.
28
M. Cinalli and D. Jacobson
determining one’s status. In lieu of the role of kinship, sharply bounded

territoriality became the basis for defining community.
The modern nation-state aggregated community, polity and territory,
dimensions of association which have historically been disaggregated. In
feudal Europe, for example, community was mostly local, the fractured
and hierarchical polity extended across the Holy Roman Empire, and
territories were a quilt of authorities, sometimes overlapping. In this
chapter, we argue that a number of contemporary historical forces such
as migration and globalisation are leading to an epochal change in the
character of borders. The changes are in large part unarticulated in any
holistic legal, political or sociological sense.
In this chapter we go beyond analysing these changes, which are
evolving in the context of globalising economic, migratory, cultural and
technological developments in an ad hoc way. Building on these devel-
opments, we suggest an holistic articulation of these changes—indeed,
we begin outlining a blueprint for the future. Any set of sociological,
economic, technological and political changes can generate positive or
negative outcomes for humanity. How do we seek to shape such devel-
opments with the welfare and human rights of people at the center
of concern? It is within this context that we suggest the emergence of
seams, in lieu of borders per se.
So, in sum, we briefly outline here, first, an analysis of the changing
dynamics of borders and bordering, and the associated politics. Second,

we note the lineaments of an articulation of these developments, or a
blueprint that at once builds on and seeks to positively direct underly-
ing social and political changes. Global changes do not happen only in
terms of broad, abstract structural forces. Human agency, for better and
for worse, has a role.
How do we understand borders and their implications for citizenship
in our present, globalising moment? We turn to, first, citizenship and
the dimensions that implicated bordering (usually implicitly). Second,
we will explicate the implications of these concepts for citizenship and
for borders and bordering—with particular interest in our present,
globalising time.
2 From Borders to Seams: The Role of Citizenship
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2 The Study of Citizenship

as a Multidimensional Notion
Citizenship is an extraordinary concept and practice that evolved over
thousands of years and, for our contemporary experience, in particular
over the recent 300 years. In the most classic approach, citizenship has
been approached as an ontological question, or otherwise as a question
about the substantive content of being a citizen. In this sense, citizen-
ship has drawn the border of politics itself. Suffice it to say, for now,
that the most accepted answer to the question about the substantive
content has been determined to be that of Marshall’s formulation.
In this formulation, we have an expansive idea of citizenship, and its
associated rights, evolving over the course of history, and in particular,
acquiring recognisable civic and political dimensions, before ending in
the last stage of social rights (Marshall 1950). This account owes its suc-
cess to a vision that aligns with an ambitious project of stretching the
border of politics through a continuous extension of rights, based on a
core belief in the virtues of post-World War II Western democracy (the
period in which Marshall himself writes). Marshall’s evolution of rights
has been viewed as an efficient way to secure a tolerable level of class
inequality through economic redistribution.
The Marshallian account has effectively brought together different

types of rights in a cohesive narrative; yet it blurs distinct dimensions
of citizenship that are independent from each other. In particular,
this is evident in Marshall’s juxtaposing ‘civic citizenship’ (as mutual
engagement and acknowledgement among equal citizens, in a shared
“membership” of the civic community) on the one hand, and ‘political
citizenship’ (regarding the agreed relationship between the governed
citizens and their governors), on the other. We can refer to these
dimensions as, respectively, the horizontal and vertical dimensions of
citizenship. In fact, civic rights do not necessarily lead to political rights,
whose content can mainly refer to the access of citizens to institutions
and policy actors with a view to engage with their decision-making.
If the continuum between civic and political rights is not necessary
in theory, it is not necessary in historical, empirical practice either.
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In fact, the civic and the political dimensions of citizenship have often
developed along directions that are historically distinct and even in
open opposition with one another. In some places and in some peri-
ods, the main dimension of citizenship has been civic, as it consisted in
accessing the membership of a particular body of citizens, sharing equal
rights that are protected by institutions and decision-makers, and thus
freely engaging in relationships of mutual acknowledgement. In other
places and times, the main dimension of citizenship has been political,
since attention has been focused more on citizens as the source of sov-
ereignty, and hence, their access to, and influence on, the domain of
decision-making.
In fact, this distinction between a civic dimension and a politi-
cal dimension of citizenship is so profound that it has informed very
different approaches to citizenship since the earliest days of Western
democracy (Cinalli 2017). For example, the Greeks left behind them
the idea of citizenship as a foremost domain of political life, with citi-
zens being firstly and mostly conceived as political agents who influence
the very decisions of those who govern them. By contrast, the Romans
left us their legacy of a more formal and abstract notion of citizenship.
Citizenship, for the Romans, was not about forms of concrete political
engagement, or access to the governors as such. Rather, citizenship in
their case was a civic status that would give any citizen entitlement to
state protection, across the empire.

Most crucially, the contrast between the civic and the political
dimension of citizenship informed the dramatic change that the major
Western democracies had to make with reference to migration in the
aftermath of the oil shocks in mid-1970s and in 1979–1980 in Europe
and the United States, respectively. Some countries such as Britain
and the Netherlands—with an historical record of segmentation and
plurality of interests, expressed for example in the negotiation of colo-
nial powers with tribes of different kinds (Waller 2013)—privileged a
political pathway for including the voice and the interest of new citizens
in the policy domain.
But other Republican countries such as France could hardly opt for
this type of pluralist client-based pathway. French historical experience
as a “civilising power” rested on the idea that new citizens were still
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the object, rather than the subject, of policy-making, at least until

new citizens were fully integrated into the civic body with its “general
will.” Put simply, the French Republican approach was framed within
the longstanding tradition of universalism and individual equality.
France determined to face its new citizens by strengthening their civic
citizenship. This did not mean that France put aside the issue of political
access to the polis. However, such political access was thought as a sec-
ondary step that would only follow the primary step of civic access and
integration of migrants in the French civitas.
The promise of a balanced intersection between the two dimensions
of citizenship are expressed in political theory, national constitutions,
and in international law. When presenting the state as a common public
arena, the expression of self-government and, globally, the expression
of national self-determination, the horizontal (civic membership) and
vertical (political representation or access) dimensions of citizens hip
coalesce (Hinsley 1986).
All these models of citizenship, however, require a highly ‘bordered’
polity, where the borders geographically (the territory), socially (the
national community) and politically (the polity) were aggregated as a
single whole and sharply defined. Contrast what preceded this nation-
state model in the form of human association that characterized feudal
Europe: social, political, religious and geographic boundaries sometimes
overlapped (in part or wholly), sometimes were contiguous, and were

all at varying scales, producing metaphorically a quilt made up of
seemingly random pieces of cloth.
3 The Postnational Turn

The emergence of postnational arguments regarding citizenship in the
1990s began to question not just the traditional assumptions around citi-
zenship, but the very idea of the aggregation of borders and boundaries—
though the postnational approach did not question the import of the
state and its physical borders per se (see Jacobson 1996). The postna-
tional authors (see also Soysal 1995) noted that other communities,
such as migrant, ethnic and religious, increasingly defined themselves in
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transnational terms. This development was not just sociological, as such,

but it was increasingly recognised legally and institutionally, notably in
the dramatic expansion of the legal legitimation of dual citizenship from
the late 1990s.
Postnational citizenship scholars argued that the (democratic) state’s
increasing accountability to human rights norms (notably for non-
citizens), and the concomitant growing role of the judiciary in the expan-
sion of rights-bearing humans (increasingly independent of citizenship
status) was shifting the weight of politics partially to a “politics of rights”
from the “politics of consent” (the latter being mostly legislative). This
has made the role of the judiciary more wrought (Jacobson and Ruffer
2003), both in the greater importance of who are the judges, and for sec-
tors of the population that seek a reestablishment of state sovereignty in
its traditional executive and legislative practice.
Tensions arose around the question of the “democratic deficit”, from
at least the 1980s, and explicitly labelled as such in Europe, but with
similar echoes in the United States. More recently, the political fractures
around these issues have been a central driver for the politics of Brexit,
the election of Trump and, in its most extreme form, far right parties in
Europe. In Eastern Europe the backlash has even been authoritarian, as
in the notable example of Orban in Hungary. It is an authoritarianism
that is even threatening to spread out to founding states of a unified,
democratic Europe (see, especially, the mounting forces of extreme-right

populism in Italy, France, Germany, and The Netherlands). Now, the
connection of citizenship to borders has become crystal clear, as different
factions contest the politics of rights versus the politics of consent—and
specifically in the fight over the entry of immigrants and refugees.
Critics of postnational citizenship have limited their concerns to
the issue of the membership dimension of citizenship. These critics
have sought to reassert the function of the politics of borders without
addressing the multidimensional nature of citizenship. Entirely typical
of such an approach is the focus on defining who is part of—or not—of
the citizenry, is the long-lasting scholarly debate distinguishing between
an ex-ante “natural’ citizen (typically, by birth of their parents, or even
further in the ancestry line) and an ex-post ‘created’ citizens (typically,
through citizenship ‘acquisition’ at birth or through ‘naturalisation’).
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Given that this distinction is especially relevant when focusing upon

people who are not ex-ante natural-born citizens, the membership-
focused approach to citizenship has obviously met its greatest successes
when dealing with migrants, and in particular the very different politics
of borders that countries apply to define who is part, or not, of their
national community (Brubaker 1989; Favell 1998). In fact, the debate
over postnational citizenship soon became, particularly in the voice
of postnational critics, one about the extent to which cross-national
variations of citizenship membership would be so large and as such pre-
vent the emergence of an effective transnationalisation of citizenship
(Geddes 2003; Koopmans et al. 2005).
Take the widespread scholarly interest in Muslims in the West: the
overall hegemony of citizenship as membership has stoked a contentious
debate that has split those scholars who consider the promotion of cul-
tural differences as compatible with national citizenship in liberal states,
from those who see cultural markers as discrepant with a truly liberal
understanding of citizenship (Barry 2002; Modood 2007). Drawing
on an old normative debate among historians and philosophers of the
‘nation’ (Hobsbawm 2012), many comparative scholars have thus reit-
erated an interest in the epistemological recognition of citizenship
from the perspective of the national state and the bordering of its own
national community.
Indeed, these accounts pivoting on epistemological citizenship—

focusing solely on membership—have become so prominent that the
question of how we know who are the citizens has pushed in a corner
any systematic research of what citizenship is in its ontological sense
(the substantive content of being a citizen, distinguishing between ‘civic
citizenship’ as a mutual engagement and among equal citizens, and
‘political citizenship’ regarding the mutual relationship between citizens
and governors), phenomenological (the “practices of citizenship” at the
micro level, among individual citizens themselves, or at the meso-level
of civic associations, activism, social movements and the like) and teleo-
logical core (the purpose of citizenship).
This debate has also nurtured a “contentious scholarship”
(Cinalli 2015), by which comparative scholars, who aim to reinstate
the cross-national divergence of “models” have opposed postnational
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challenges emphasising, for example, processes of Europeanisation or

historical transitions from a model to the other (Bleich 2003; Jacobson
1996; Soysal 1995).
The fact that the epistemological ground has been the most suit-
able for nationally minded comparativists may also tell us why vari-
ous aspects of integration of Muslims continue to be discussed with a
chronic reference in the migration literature, even in countries where
large numbers of Muslims are already naturally born citizens, and even
if the usual membership taxonomies built around ethno-assimilationism
on the one hand and multiculturalism on the other have proved to pro-
duce only inconsistent results (Cinalli and Giugni 2016). Whatever
the model, it is just counterintuitive to expect that its impact is the
same across Muslim migrants and Muslim citizens; Muslim citizens are
prone, like other citizens, to the deeper processes that embed citizens
while migrants are not. Thus, it is a fallacy to assume that being a
Muslim flattens the distinction between citizen and migrant.
4 The Phenomenological Dimension,

or the Practice of Citizenship
The reference to the “practicing” of citizenship reminds the scholar that

this is a multifaceted and nuanced concept which, even when agreed
upon in ontological terms, can lead to very different forms of “lived
citizenship” on the side of citizens themselves. This concern with the
practices of citizenship taps into yet another dimension, which may
be taken as the phenomenology of citizenship, once again at the core
of the border of politics. Phenomenological citizenship is about the
“making” and the “existence” of citizenship such as civic associations,
activism, and social movements. In a certain sense it is where citizenship
also gets driven through a bottom-up agency. The main interest in this
case is about inclusiveness, with citizenship varying between a pole of
exclusion and a pole of inclusion. The practice of citizenship by citizens
is telling, for example, in terms of relational patterns uniting citizens
among themselves and with their governors. Suffice to remind us here
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Fig. 1 States-system as a multicentric world
the importance of, in this light, questions regarding networks and the
mobilising of citizens (see, for example, Putnam 2002).
In fact, citizens belong to myriad families, churches, voluntary asso-
ciations, places of work, colleges, and the like. These are groups and
organisations each with their own networks, collectively defined as “civil

society,” linking into the policy domain with other networks made of
institutions, decision-makers, and political elites of different kinds
(Cinalli 2004). Indeed, the state is itself another association, its mem-
bers being all the citizens themselves.
Think of the state and the states-system, abstracted, in the way of
Fig. 1.
Each circle is a state, autonomous of others, with defined borders and
all the respective associations and networks—spanning across civil soci-
ety and the policy domain—circumscribed by its borders. The states-sys-
tem introduced a multicentric world, built around sovereign states.
Distinctions are sharply delineated—citizen and foreigner or alien, “us”
and “them”—and loyalties are singular, dual citizenship mostly pro-
scribed. In the well-known analogy put forth by one legal commentator,
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one could no more have loyalty to more than one state than “one could
have loyalty to more than one wife” (Martin 1999). That is, dual loyalties
are morally akin to bigamy.
In principle, within the state, all are equal before the law and all cit-
izens in theory are morally and legally equidistant from the state. (In
practice, of course, this is not the case, but that inequality allows legiti-
mate protest by the citizenry, with varying effect, regarding corruption,
pay for play access, discrimination, unfair economic disparities and the
like.) Domestically the state is, in principle, “flat,” not a sanctioned
hierarchy of castes or estates, as in other social forms.
What we have just described is in a generalized form the traditional
model of the state and states-system. In quick order, however, over just
three or four decades the world has shifted quickly. Abstracted, it is
beginning to look like Fig. 2.
In this abstracted image, sometimes called the “flower of life,” where
the centre of each circle is on the circumference of six surrounding
circles, represents a world where different kinds of social networks
Fig. 2 Networks intersecting across states
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intersect across states. State borders no longer contain the various

forms of social, cultural and economic association within its borders.
Though one could argue that to some extent this was always the case,
and that to this configuration we are indeed making return, in recent
decades cross-border network ties (not simply human movement) has
increased exponentially to the point we have a qualitatively differ-
ent world. Growth of international non-governmental organizations
(INGOs), global digital relationships, corporations, human rights insti-
tutions, cases and law, changes in language (for example, from “illegal”
to “undocumented” migrant), and dual citizenship are just a few exam-
ples. Dual citizenship expanded dramatically in two senses: the number
of countries permitting dual citizenship, and in the numbers of actual
individuals carrying dual citizenship.
Ultimately, the “flower of life”, and more generally the assessment of
network patterns spanning civil society and the policy domain, opens
space for a more systematic consideration of the scope of citizenship. The
fact that certain citizens are more “in” and others are more “out” can only
be ascertained in a more holistic way by a systematic assessment of, inter
alia, network patterns, beyond simple assumptions based on an assess-
ment of membership criteria. This observation is especially pregnant
when considering transnationalism (Balibar 2003). In this regard, the
practice of citizenship determines in large part who is in and who is out.
5 The telos of Citizenship

Taken from this perspective, access to citizenship as membership
potentially links into the teleological dimension. This accounts for the
purposes of citizenship, which may involve aims such as reinstating the
traditional function of the politics of borders—the bordering of different
communities so as to demarcate a superordinate national community—
or with the aim to stretch the border of politics by transforming passive
subjects of rule-making to active participants in the foundation of rules.
This teleological dimension is about the “why” of citizenship. It calls for
identifying the main purpose of citizenship and as such concerns the
normative questions regarding the aspirations of citizenship.
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When focusing on the borders of politics, however, it is not just

about the making of active participants. Notably, many scholars have
pointed to equality (in its social and economic sense) as a key purpose
of citizenship, taking centre stage in the public discussions of scholars,
practitioners, and public commentators in the aftermath of the Great
Recession (Block and Somers 2014).
Prior to this, in the post-Cold War period (about 1989–2008) the
main goal had been the promotion of economic growth, with the
premise that a rising tide lifts all boats. Equality was framed, at best,
as “equality before the law” such as on equal opportunity and ending
discrimination. Overall, virtuous competition and the praising of merit
have stood out as the main goals worthy of pursuit rather than dimin-
ishing economic inequality. Most crucially, this belief in merit and com-
petition has stood out as the main channel through which citizenship
could be extended to groups of people, and in particular, people of
migrant descent who had hitherto been excluded from membership.
In the usual formulations, this emphasis on merit has gone side-
by-side with a multicultural agenda regarding ‘difference’, ‘minorities’,
and ‘cultural diversity’ in general. In some cases, the pathway from migra-
tion to citizenship has been seen in direct relationship with the ‘talents’ to
be spent in ‘global market of skills and competences’ to use a well-know
French formulation that has been enshrined in the letter of law.1
This normative development, which has been assumed as an inher-

ent part of citizenship development, has thus pushed forward a pur-
portedly modernized form of citizenship that rewards ‘complementarity
for non-brothers’ (Sénac 2017) by which categories of adjunct citizens
are added on the basis of what they bring to citizenship (often in the
form of economic skills and investment). While this normative vision
has had the undoubted result of reinforcing the role of active partici-
pation (regarding contributions to the polity), it has had the paradox-
ical result of instituting and legitimising inequalities among citizens.
So, the reason to elaborate new policies that promote cultural minorities
1See the French legislation and policies on “Compétences et Talents”, the “Carte bleue européenne”,
or the “contribution économique exceptionnelle” (2006 and 2007).
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was situated in their contribution to citizenship, just as their previous

exclusion followed their supposed cost to the body politic.
We see implicitly a replay of this debate in the Anglo-Saxon pro-
motion of “diversity” (Frank 2005; Macedo 2000) vis-à-vis a French
Republican defence of pursuing social and economic equality as the
main goal of citizenship. The French argument is made despite variable
contributions that different groups of citizens may offer since the diver-
sity rationale (in this perspective) constrains an effective engagement
with larger issues of social justice and equality (Schuck 2003). Among
the most critical voices, the contemporary stress on diversity is seen as
politically driven—from a neoliberal perspective—to defeat the princi-
ple of social and economic equality.
From such a neoliberal perspective the main goal is “effectiveness”
and “performance,” while using diversity to make these neoliberal goals
legitimate (Scott 1998; Sénac 2015). This is also within the framing of
a declared European objective to push for knowledge, skills, and inno-
vation; indeed, each successive EU enlargement is justified in terms of
economic benefits of a more global market, rather than European cit-
izenship per se. (The failure to address the substantive quality of a
European citizenship is likely a contributory factor to the EU’s uncer-
tain legitimacy across large segments of Europeans.)
So, in sum, the issue of equality should not be mistaken as a core
quality of citizenship per se, but as a teleological objective that is con-

tingent on domestic developments and debate.
6 The Challenges Ahead: The Need

for a Paradigmatic Recasting
of the Debate on Citizenship
Taking a more comprehensive approach to citizenship, notably draw-
ing on the epistemological (membership), ontological (relationship
of governors and governed), phenomenological (active citizenship and
civic association), and teleological (purpose) dimensions, allows us to
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better engage contemporary and future developments at the crossroads

between the politics of borders and the borders of politics.
For example, consider the kinds of networks that are emerging from
a phenomenological perspective. The now growing transnational net-
works indicate a fundamental change that challenges the state-centric
assumptions of citizenship. By extension, the individual citizen’s forms
of self-identification, the mobilisation of ethnic and religious groups,
the growing numbers of INGOs, the multinational corporate and pro-
fessional networks and even internet-driven forms of mobilisation are
opening up space for rethinking citizenship. Furthermore, just on this
level of cross-border changes, activities and engagement, all dimensions
of citizenship are implicated (see Jacobson and Goodwin-White 2018).
Notably, the highly bordered notion of the sovereign nation-state and
the associated concept of an holistic national community all come into
questions.
One key change we note is the emergence of what we call “Global
Seams” as one extraordinary, unarticulated development, with implica-
tions for political, sociological and economic research, on the one hand,
and for normative argument on the other. These implications still need
to be teased out, and drawn into programmatic study, in a way that the
theoretical and empirical reinforce each other.
Global Seams are spaces where there is, formally as well as informally,
ongoing negotiation and articulation of the transnational forces and nom-

inally sovereign states. While the “greyness” of the Global Seam may first
stand out, this is not simply an absence of order, but a necessary condi-
tion for these arrangements to happen—to reconcile or at least “live with”
the purported contradiction of national states with transnational interests.
Furthermore, all of us—citizens and the state alike—now partake in this
fluid environment, as well as the “navigation” and “negotiation” needed in
the Global Seams. So in a sense these Global Seams also help to foster the
articulation between larger contextual structures (of policies, discourses,
international balances, and so forth) on the one hand, and the agency of
citizens and non-citizens themselves on the other.
Think of the Global Seam as, in part, analogous to an export zone; as
a physical and geographical seam in this case. States create export zones,
where they ease regulations, drop certain kinds of taxes and the like in
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order to attract investment and business, which they are in some sense
compelled to do in a global economy. The export zone in this regard
attempts to reconcile the concern with sovereignty and control with
the demands of a global economy. Taken under more general terms,
the black-and-white of borders and notional sovereign boundaries
that sharply bifurcate the inside and the outside are, in Global Seams,
replaced by overlapping worlds, or zones. The seams represent in its sar-
torial sense not only a division but also a “stitching” together—both factors
are at work. This is why these Global Seams cannot be defined simply as
civilisational barricades, as markers in a “clash of civilisations.”
In particular, focusing on the flows of migration around the world,
a number of seams can be identified across deep economic, political,
social, and cultural cleavages. The economic is not surprising; it drives
the migration in large part. But the seam takes on a larger signifi-
cance due to the other distinctions. France on the Mediterranean with
migratory flows through North Africa, and equally the United States
vis-à-vis Latin America, are especially notable in this regard. Simply put,
migrants bring with them new practices of citizenship (broadly under-
stood), engagement and activism that intersect with (and even con-
test) existing practices. Global Seams reflect potentially deep cleavages
but they are much more than that—these cleavages are the settings for
a profound set of ongoing, constantly negotiated social, economic and
political arrangements—which are of extraordinary significance when

we articulate and research citizenship in its contemporary trajectory
and in its ambition to stretch out the border of politics. Overall then,
the Global Seams reflect the fundamental tectonic shifts taking place
vis-à-vis the movement of people, global markets, states and emerging
postnational and transnational social structures, driven by the process of
globalisation and the principles of state sovereignty.
Critical to understand in terms of the sociological and normative
possibilities of Global Seams is the following: The Global Seam creates
a space for defining and redefining distinct solidarities, be they trans-
national, ethnic, religious or ideological. Just as the Global Seam is a
space where the interface of the postnational and the state is articulated,
numerous other actors can take this space and shape and mobilise dif-
ferent movements and “communities.” So two sets of articulations take
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place in the Global Seam, that of the state articulating between globalis-
ing forces and national concerns; and a variety of ethnic, ideological
and other groups that generate their own transnational or subnational
frameworks, both symbolically and structurally. Although this is not
necessarily a functional, complementary process, the question of cross-
scale, as well as the crossing between the politics of borders and the bor-
ders of politics, could hardly be more apparent.
Take the process whereby postnational principles began to take hold,
through the adoption of transnational human rights standards on ref-
ugees and migrants. States, though concerned with their own sover-
eignty, had to address the large flows of foreign populations, especially
those in their territories who fell between the strict “alien-citizen” dis-
tinction. Transnational human rights standards provide such a mech-
anism. In so doing a Global Seam was, in effect, insinuated into the
legal framework, empowering non-state actors (both as individuals and
for non-state groups). So we have a seam in which the state can to a
degree manipulate and articulate the relationship with global forces (for
example clamping down on numbers of refugees). On the other hand,
however, new non-state actors and individuals are given legal and hence
political agency—and they articulate new claims to the state that falls
out the traditional idea of citizenship/membership being a necessarily
integrative institution. It is a vastly different practice of citizenship for
the refugee today than it was in, say, 1965 (when American immigra-
tion law quotas recognized all nationalities equally): the process is dif-
ferent, the range of categories of refugee is considerably expanded, and
the protection for aliens is more robust, especially in the Euro-Atlantic
arena. The state was truly sovereign and transnational activist networks
almost nonexistent in 1965.
Accordingly, one of our objectives in our future research is to analyse
the various forms that the Global Seam takes, to identify its favoura-
ble or inhibiting conditions and mechanisms, and to demonstrate, on
the normative level, the extent to which an alternative model of democ-
racy may develop a broader scope of citizenship substantially, as well
as better practices for more effective, sustainable and inclusive policies
that go beyond the standard concerns of proponents and opponents of
postnationalism alike. Yet we recognize such a normative proposal must
43
address the extraordinary complexity and inequalities (economic yes,

but also legal, political and the like) that are emerging—complexities
that go well beyond the usual categories of race, religion and gender. In
addition, that complexity includes the myriad institutional interlays and
oppositions, from different regional, national and subnational agencies,
and tensions regarding judicial and legislative politics. Scholars have yet
to fully map and conceptualise this reality, let alone develop a normative
model that makes sense in this context.
If we remain committed to the sole lens of “membership”, we will
always see the Global Seam as simply a “grey zone,” associated with
criminality, the informal, and the deviant. Doing so causes us to miss
the fundamental changes taking place in terms of the networks, forms
of mobilisation, and novel modes of identity that are negotiated in these
geographic and virtual seams.
In the political fracturing of the democracies, the traditional models
seek defined borders that are strongly regulated. The seam is a frontier.
For the emerging postnational order, the seam brings societies together,
with overlapping “stitching.” The border can be, in this light, a “line” of
delineation; it can also act as a bringing together, a suturing of networks
and communities. Self and Other are (or can be) mutually constitutive
in a “productive” way for both parties—from business relationships,
co-religionists, activists, and so forth. The border as civilisational divider
creates an alienation between self and other; the border as a suture,

a seam, reconnects the self with the other, allowing for a negative dialec-
tic that may bring about a mutual relationship.
The issue, however, is not just one of eliciting the empirical underpin-
nings or structural changes of social and political change that are impacting
citizenship. We are at an inflection such that broader structural changes
induce other changes and place certain parameters that shape future devel-
opments; and those developments are not predetermined in toto. We need
to think prescriptively as well for the most humane, civic minded future
possible—“visions,” or “blueprints”—which can serve the purpose of
coalescing myriad individual and collective actors for particular outcomes.
Much like the (still influential) European social scientists of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were at the inflection point
brought on by industrialisation, so they found themselves not simply
44
analysing the epochal transformation which they witnessed, but in

prescriptive calls-to-action. But we can also learn from their errors,
some of which have been tragic for humanity. From both the Right
and the Left “blueprints” were forced upon huge swathes of humanity,
as James Scott (1998) brilliantly expounds, with unfathomed human
suffering. We have an opportunity to think ahead and to develop pre-
scriptions tempered by the knowledge that the civic capacities of people
need to embrace and drive such prescriptive changes.
References
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Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Multiculturalism. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Bleich, Erich. 2003. Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking
Since the 1960s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brubaker, W.R. 1989. Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and
North America. Lanham: University Press of America.
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organisational Alliances: A Comparative Study of the Unemployment and
Asylum Issue-Fields in Britain.” European Political Communication 8 (4).
http://hdl.handle.net/1814/3958.
Cinalli, Manlio. 2015. “Fields of Contentious Politics: Migration and Ethnic
Relations.” In Social Movement Studies in Europe, edited by O. Fillieule and
G. Accornero. New York: Berghahn.
Cinalli, M., and M. Giugni. 2016. “Electoral Participation of Muslims
in Europe: Assessing the Impact of Institutional and Discursive
Opportunities.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (2): 309–324.
Cinalli, Manlio. 2017. Citizenship and the Political Integration of Muslim: The
Relational Field of French Islam. London: Palgrave.
Favell, Adrian. 1998. Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of
Citizenship in France and Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Frank, Jill. 2005. A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Geddes, Andrew. 2003. The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe.

London: Sage.
Hinsley, Francis Harry. 1986. Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hobsbawm, Eric. 2012. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme,
Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jacobson, David. 1996. Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of
Citizenship. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jacobson, David, and Galya Ruffer. 2003. “Courts across Borders: The
Implications of Judicial Agency for Human Rights and Democracy.” Human
Rights Quarterly 25 (1): 74–92.
Jacobson, David, and Goodwin-White. 2018. “The Future of Postnational
Citizenship: Human Rights and Borders in a Re-nationalizing World.”
Mondi Migranti 2: 7–27.
Koopmans, Ruud, Paul Statham, M. Gugni, and F. Passy. 2005. Contested
Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
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Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marshall, T.H. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Globe: Between Rejection and Embrace.” Georgetown Immigration Law
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Modood, Tariq. 2007. Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Week 6 Cinalli and Jacobsen The Racialization of Muslims - Empirical Studies of Islamophobia in Migration, - Borders - and - Citizenship

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2

From Borders to Seams: The Role

determining one’s status. In lieu of the role of kinship, sharply bounded

dynamics of borders and bordering, and the associated politics. Second,

2 The Study of Citizenship

The Marshallian account has effectively brought together different

state protection, across the empire.

the object, rather than the subject, of policy-making, at least until

overlapped (in part or wholly), sometimes were contiguous, and were

3 The Postnational Turn

transnational terms. This development was not just sociological, as such,

democratic Europe (see, especially, the mounting forces of extreme-right

Given that this distinction is especially relevant when focusing upon

Indeed, these accounts pivoting on epistemological citizenship—

challenges emphasising, for example, processes of Europeanisation or

4 The Phenomenological Dimension,

The reference to the “practicing” of citizenship reminds the scholar that

Fig. 1 States-system as a multicentric world

organisations each with their own networks, collectively defined as “civil

Fig. 2 Networks intersecting across states

intersect across states. State borders no longer contain the various

5 The telos of Citizenship

When focusing on the borders of politics, however, it is not just

This normative development, which has been assumed as an inher-

or the “contribution économique exceptionnelle” (2006 and 2007).

was situated in their contribution to citizenship, just as their previous

quality of citizenship per se, but as a teleological objective that is con-

6 The Challenges Ahead: The Need

better engage contemporary and future developments at the crossroads

ongoing negotiation and articulation of the transnational forces and nom-

political arrangements—which are of extraordinary significance when

address the extraordinary complexity and inequalities (economic yes,

creates an alienation between self and other; the border as a suture,

analysing the epochal transformation which they witnessed, but in

Cinalli, Manlio. 2004. “Horizontal Networks vs. Vertical Networks in Multi-

Geddes, Andrew. 2003. The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe.

Review 14: 1–34.

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2 The Study of Citizenship

3 The Postnational Turn

4 The Phenomenological Dimension,

5 The telos of Citizenship

6 The Challenges Ahead: The Need