In this module, we have three specific goals. First, we want to delve into the concept of global citizenship. We start by looking at the constituent terms involved. So what is citizenship? What are the implications of being a citizen? What does it mean to add the qualifier ‘global’? Are the implications and practice of citizenship the same for someone from Canada as it is for a ‘global’ citizen? If not, then what is different and why is the term citizenship invoked? Second, we want to introduce the narrative of global citizenship. Putting aside some of the conceptual problems, what are the claims being made by those who identify as global citizens? Why are such claims being made? What are the implications of these claims? Third, we want to critically examine this narrative made by global citizens. Is the use of the term ‘citizen’ problematic? Is it even possible to be a ‘global’ citizen? And if it is possible, what are the costs/benefits for those who claim to be global citizens? And for the wider world at large for that matter? By engaging with these questions, we will have begun to set the theoretical foundation to investigate the concrete manifestations of global citizenship in future modules. Theoretically, we will investigate cosmopolitan versus communitarian approaches to global issues as well as the multilayered aspects of identity in global relations. In terms of concrete issues, we will look at the costs and benefits of globalization and the idea of global citizenship: civil society, governance, economic relations, migration, human rights, the environment. But let us begin with understanding the concept of global citizenship itself.

In order to meaningfully explore the concept of global citizenship, it is necessary to understand the constituent elements of the term. First, and most importantly, we need to examine the idea of citizenship. The legal concept of citizenship is employed in two primary ways. The first defines formal membership in a political community, most often within a state. This use of the term citizenship is roughly equivalent to nationality. For example, if you were born in Canada or have become naturalized here, you are a citizen of Canada or Canadian.

The opposite of a citizen is an alien. Aliens are either a citizen of another state, also known as a foreign national, or one of the 15 million stateless people in the world. Stateless people have no recognized citizenship in any state. People can become stateless for a variety of reasons, for example through conflict, gender bias, ethnic discrimination, or belonging to a non-state territory. The most recent example of a stateless people are the Rohingya, who are currently fleeing ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar government.

The second legal aspect of citizenship defines the rights and obligations between citizens and the state. In Canada, for example, citizens and permanent residents have protection under the law and constitutionally protected rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter protects democratic rights, language rights, equality rights, mobility rights, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association. However, it should be noted that permanent residents cannot vote, run for office, or gain employment in jobs that require a high-level security clearance. Citizenship also provides some protection and representation when citizens are traveling abroad through embassies and consular services. Conversely, citizenship also comes with obligations. In Canada, citizens are obligated to respect the law, the rights and freedoms of others, and there is an expectation citizen will participate in democratic processes. In other countries, there may be further obligations, such as military or community service. Some may even require declarations of loyalty to the state or traditional forms of authority like the monarchy. Therefore, from a legal perspective, citizenship is very much a concrete relationship between institutions and people, with clearly defined roles for each.

However, with the development and maturation of the welfare state, which emerged post-World War Two, a social dimension of citizenship has emerged that goes beyond the legal and political rights mentioned above. For some, citizenship stakes a claim on the right to a standard of living within the political community. In other words, the state has some obligation to ensure that citizens have access to things such as adequate housing, food, and education. Some make stronger claims that the state has an obligation to ensure an equitable distribution of resources between citizens. While the social dimension of global citizenship is more contested, it is still rooted in a concrete relationship between institutions and people.

So, what happens when we add the qualifier ‘global’ to the concept of citizenship? Well, let us apply the same legal and social perspectives introduced above. From a legal perspective, we introduced two aspects of global citizenship: membership in a particular community and the rights/obligation that are constitutive of that membership. There are two quite divergent views here: global citizenship is either defined as a universal membership of all people or a particularistic membership of people who live, work, and play at the global level. Consequently, the rights and obligations associated with global citizenship are also quite divergent. If global citizenship is defined as membership in a fellowship of all people, the rights and obligations of membership are connected, however loosely, to the narrative of universal rights. The idea that every person on the planet is owed certain inalienable rights from the simple fact of being born a human being. This also comes with an obligation, albeit less well defined, to ensure that others are able to benefit from the same universal rights.

If global citizenship is defined by membership in the limited group of people who work and/or live at the global level, it is less clear what rights and obligations are at play here beyond privilege: economic privilege which grants the means to be a global citizen and political privilege which allows access to decision-makers to support the interests of the global citizenry. From a social perspective, a similar division exists between those who see global citizenship as defined by membership in a global elite and those who define it as a universal fellowship of all people.

Despite the seemingly contemporary nature of debates on global citizenship, it is nothing new. The ancient Greeks and Romans self-identified as global citizens as far back as 2500 years ago. Since then, global citizenship has been a recurring theme in philosophical debates. These debates have focused on the degree to which individuals have reciprocal rights and obligations with others: from family through to all of humanity. One of the most important questions postulated is whether we as individuals are obligated to treat people we have never met and who live on the other side of the world the same as our kith and kin?

While these debates are again nothing new, they have been made more urgent and more personal by the contemporary forces of globalization. Information and communication technology has brought the plight of the ‘other’ into our daily lives. Conflict and war were one thing when valorized and mythologized by our elders and leaders. It was quite a different thing to see the pictures and film coming out of the Vietnam War or Iraq War: war stories are very different than witnessing the suffering and brutality being both experienced and inflicted in war.

Advances in transportation have facilitated an exponential growth in the movement of people. This includes both those in the developed world utilizing cheap flights to go on vacation and those in the developing world fleeing conflict and persecution as well as seeking greater economic opportunity. This movement of people has made the ‘other’ more familiar. These are no longer places we have never been nor people we have never met – they are increasingly the people who live beside us or the people we have met while traveling abroad.

The interconnectedness of international trade and finance has created both economic opportunity and costs. Opportunities include new markets to sell goods, access to cheaper resources, as well as new sources of finance. Costs include downward pressure on wages and significant challenges to less competitive industries both in the developed and developing world. The processes and outcomes of globalization have generated new international threats which require global responses. These threats range from transnational terrorism, think of Al Qaeda or ISIS; international financial crises/contagion, think of the Latin American Debt Crisis in the 1980s, the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, or the 2008 Global Financial Crisis; environmental pollution, think ocean pollution, air pollution, or even the nuclear contamination of Chernobyl or Fukushima; climate change, think of global warming with its changing patterns of droughts/floods and increasingly dangerous and common hurricanes/typhoons.

For many people, all of this has generated greater empathy and awareness of our common humanity and common interests. In turn, such empathy and awareness have fostered a nascent community of globally-minded people. At the thickest end of this argument, are people whose commitment to the global community challenges or even eclipses all others. If we begin to identify with the global community, we begin to admit to responsibilities that extend past our national borders. We begin to build ties between like-minded people. We begin to think and act globally. This process has promoted the cultivation of shared values that have coalesced around human rights, environmental protection, gender rights, multiculturalism, poverty alleviation, conflict mitigation, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, democratic governance, and the protection/preservation of world culture to name but a few. These values have both created and in turn been supported by the emergence of international institutions and civil society networks. These institutions and networks have fostered norms, standards, and laws that further strengthen the sinews of globalization and global citizenship. In some ways, global citizens are seen as the necessary corollary to multinational corporations and international institutions in that they are the countervailing force to business and politics. However, even those who identify the strongest with the concept of global citizenship, recognize its fragility. They recognize that global citizenship is very much a project that requires leadership and activism. They recognize that the narrative of global citizenship is still under-defined, and the endpoint is still unknown. They recognize that the project of global citizenship is like a house of cards that could all come tumbling down even while at the same time they strongly believe it is a necessity in our globalized world.

The narrative of global citizenship makes extraordinary claims. It argues that we as individuals have obligations beyond our families, our cities, our religious associations, our ethnicities, and our countries. These obligations are based on ethical claims of universal human rights. They are based on the necessity of dealing with the pressing externalities of our globalized world. The narrative of global citizenship and the obligations that come with it are demanding great transformation. They are all-encompassing. As such, they also raise numerous critiques. The first criticism argues the basis of global citizenship is often fundamentally flawed. Whether it is the Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes or the contemporary political philosopher Martha Nussbaum, advocates of global citizenship privilege the global community over nationality. They both argue that the place of one’s birth is accidental and morally irrelevant and as such any obligations derived from national citizenship are arbitrary. Further, they argue that a much more ethically consistent claim can be made on our obligation to all humans. There is nothing arbitrary about being human. Critics of this position argue that both Diogenes and Nussbaum are missing the rich social and cultural histories that give meaning to particular societies. This meaning generates attachment to community and builds thick identities to which individuals are willing to make sacrifices in the name of. They argue that global citizenship is too broad, too theoretical, too antiseptic, to generate such loyalty and willingness to sacrifice.

The second criticism of global citizenship questions the use of the word ‘global’. It is often assumed that the term global is used spatially, to define the geographical reach of citizenship. In his sense, ‘global’ is a value-neutral term. However, some question this neutrality. Whether it is the Ancient Greeks and Romans or contemporary liberal philosophers, the word ‘global’ refers to an order defined by the values of the dominant actor or culture. It refers to the expansion of an empire, whether that be literal in the sense of the Romans or a more figurative sense such as the contemporary liberal democratic capitalism. The rights and obligations of membership in the global community are neither neutral nor a product of negotiation between equals. They are imposed by the strong at the core of the system. From this perspective, becoming a global citizen is less about building or recognizing a world community than it is about being allowed to join a club whose rules are already established. If this argument that global citizenship is about membership in an empire, then it is not benign. The rights and obligations that are associated with global citizenship will privilege the core at the expense of the periphery.

The third criticism of global citizenship has a bit more of a hard edge to it: global citizenship is hypocrisy. They argue that most self-identified global citizens are keyboard warriors: they ‘like’ a post on their Facebook feed that details the suffering of people ‘over there’; they attend live aid concerts and say they went to bring attention to the plight of ‘those people’; they wear some fashionable wrist band in support of poverty alleviation or anti-corruption. They do not organize political movements to force their government to act on specific issues. They do not volunteer more than a token bit of their time and money to help others. They do not take the time to meet and know the lived experiences of those they are advocating on behalf of. And perhaps most telling, they will most likely be able to describe the plight of people across the world but would have little idea about the poverty in their own cities. Those who argue that global citizenship is largely hypocritical posit that it is easier to act in a token way on behalf of people you have never met, in places you will likely never go than it is to do the hard work necessary to solve similar problems right in front of us. In this way, global citizenship is more about privilege and making the privileged feel good about themselves than it is about fighting for the rights and obligations of humanity.

The last criticism is much more forgiving. It argues that while people may be genuinely globally minded and that such global awareness is increasingly necessary, it is wrong to use the term citizenship. Citizenship denotes an institutional arrangement with established and reciprocal rights and obligations. If I am Canadian, I have established and reciprocal rights and obligations with the Canadian government. Most are written down and defined in the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The rest are conventions that have evolved through practice but are still generally recognized by myself and fellow citizens. But what institutional arrangement exists globally? There is no world government or authority to whom I have defined and reciprocal rights and obligations. So, what does it mean to be a global ‘citizen’? Does the concept of citizenship have any meaning in this context? Another variant of this critique may concede the necessity of acting globally to attenuate global problems. It may recognize the benefit of empathizing with the plight of others. But national citizenship has one major advantage over global citizenship, legitimacy. The rights and obligations that are created in the national context are legitimated by the authority of the state. In Canada, the authority of the state is legitimated by its democratic processes. This, in turn, legitimates the rights and obligations that constitute Canadian citizenship.

This module has sought to introduce and problematize the concept of global citizenship. This is a particularly necessary step for a class such as this since the concept is contested both in the literature and in practice. To begin, we introduced the legal and social aspects of the concept of national citizenship. We noted that legally, national citizenship defines membership in a particular political community as well as the rights and obligations owed between citizens and the state. We also noted that since the advent of the modern welfare state, a social dimension to national citizenship has become increasingly salient. This social dimension stakes a claim on a minimum standard of living for all citizens. The state has increasingly become responsible for the health, wealth, and general happiness of its citizens. An important insight gleaned from this discussion is the concrete nature of the citizenship-state relationship. From this discussion, we investigated the implications of adding the qualifier ‘global’ to the concept of citizenship. From a legal and social perspective, this is problematic. From a legal perspective, what membership does global citizenship entail? And if this membership is defined as a universal fellowship of human beings, what are the rights and obligations that are associated with this membership beyond privilege? And who or what can establish and enforce these rights and obligations? From a social perspective, there is the argument that everybody, everywhere is owed basic universal human rights. But again, who or what can establish and enforce these rights and obligations? However, with all this being said, it is recognized that there are problems that require a global response. That the world needs some representation of individuals to countervail the influence of multinational corporations and international institutions. That as the world has gotten smaller, many have developed greater empathy and common identity with those that have traditionally been considered the ‘other’. Yet with this being said, those who are critical of the concept of global citizenship, raise some important questions. Can a global community ever have the degree of attachment that national citizenship provides? Is global citizenship anything more than a representation and exercise of literal or figurative empire? To what degree is global citizenship just cover for the global elite? And finally, for those who are more sympathetic to the intent of those who identify as global citizens, is it really a problem of word choice? By claiming ‘citizenship’, are these people biting off more than the concept can deliver on? If so, would globally-minded be more appropriate? These points and these discussions will form a sound basis for many of the discussions to come in this class.

The first legal aspect of national citizenship defines formal membership in a political community, most often within a state. This use of the term citizenship is roughly equivalent to nationality. For example, if you were born in Canada or have become naturalized here, you are a citizen of Canada or Canadian. The opposite of a citizen is an alien. Aliens are either a citizen of another state, also known as a foreign national, or they are stateless. The second legal aspect of citizenship defines the rights and obligations between citizens and the state. In Canada, citizens have protection under the law and constitutionally protected rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: democratic rights, language rights, equality rights, mobility rights, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association. Citizenship also provides some protection and representation when citizens are traveling abroad through embassies and consular services. Conversely, citizenship also comes with obligations. In Canada, citizens are obligated to respect the law, the rights and freedoms of others, and there is an expectation citizens will participate in democratic processes. In other countries, there may be further obligations, such as military or community service or may require declarations of loyalty to the state or traditional forms of authority like the monarchy. Importantly, the legal aspect of citizenship denotes a concrete relationship between two specific actors: citizens and the state.

The social dimension of citizenship goes beyond the legal and political rights mentioned above. This argument has emerged concurrently with the development of the post-war welfare state. From this perspective, citizenship stakes a claim on the right to at least a minimum standard of living within the political community. In other words, the state has some obligation to ensure that citizens have access to things such as adequate housing, food, and education. Some make stronger claims that the state has an obligation to ensure an equitable distribution of resources between citizens. While the social dimension of global citizenship is more contested, it is still rooted in a concrete relationship between institutions and people.

Stateless people have no recognized citizenship in any state. This means they have no protection, neither domestically nor internationally beyond, what other states and institutions are willing to offer. People can become stateless for a variety of reasons, for example through conflict, gender bias, ethnic discrimination, or belonging to a non-state territory. The most recent example of a stateless people are the Rohingya, who are currently fleeing ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar government.

From a legal and social perspective, it is highly problematic to add the qualifier ‘global’ to the concept of citizenship. From a legal perspective, it is unclear to what community this citizenship denotes membership. And if it is meant to declare membership in the universal fellowship of all humans, what rights and obligations come with that? Further, between whom are these rights and obligations decided and enforced? Yet many argue that there are problems that require a global response. They posit that the interests of the individual need to be represented alongside MNCs and international institutions. That being said, there are still serious issues with the degree to which global citizenship denotes a concrete relationship between known actors. There are questions as to whether those who claim to be global citizens are in fact citizens of anywhere.

People from somewhere are people whose identify with a sense of place and attachment to a group. For a Canadian patriot, this means to identify with Canada or Saskatchewan or Saskatoon. It is this attachment that gives their life meaning. In other words, they come from somewhere. They feel a deep attachment to their community and those they share that community with. They have a strong sense of where they’re from, sometimes with roots going back generations. They have a strong sense of national citizenship, with an ascribed identity. That is, an identity ascribed by the community and the place to which they belong. As a result, they value familiarity, security, and group attachments. People from anywhere have an identity and self-worth derived from their achievements and position. They, therefore, have an achieved identity, derived from their life experience.  An achieved identity allows you to fit in anywhere. In a sense, it deterritorializes you and allowing you to fit in anywhere.