Editorial: Re-spatializing transnational citizenship

Abstract

Thinking about citizenship in the context of transnational flows and global actors provides opportunities to considering new possibilities for politics and human agency in the contemporary era. Joining the interdisciplinary discussions where these approaches are adopted, this special issue on “transnational lived citizenship” sets out to challenge fixed notions of citizenship and calls for its re-spatialization and re-politicization. Specifically, we stress the importance of the non-state-based material and locatable situated practices, memories, and imaginings of particular actors. Importantly, we do not limit the forms of political agency associated with citizenship to individuals, or to the positions, practices, and acts related to polity memberships. Rather, we identify how citizenship is also made and acted out collectively in various socio-spatial contexts. Moreover, the individual papers propose new ways of understanding how people, as political subjects, are differently positioned in their communities and societies, and how they pursue new political stances and actions in their transnationalizing worlds. Centering ‘the geographical’ as the basis of enquiry, the issue as a whole seeks to provide spatial-theoretical contributions to the interdisciplinary debates on relational and contested citizenship.