Citizenship, Membership, and Rights

Dear Colleagues,

The literature on “citizenship” is extensive. It encompasses fields such as history, sociology, cultural studies, constitutional theory, democratic theory, political history and theory, and feminist studies. In recent years, because of the growing number of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrations due to climate change, wars, and failed states, the question of who can become a member of a political community has become ever more relevant and urgent. An important line of thinking about citizenship has developed through the reception of Hannah Arendt’s phrase of the “right to have rights”, which she coined in light of the horrors of World War II, which rendered so many people “stateless”. Citizenship is viewed as the most important institution for securing the basic rights of individuals. The right to have rights is in fact the right to citizenship, that is, the right to political membership and to have those rights guaranteed by the citizenship laws of that political community (see the works by Seyla Benhabib, Alison Kesby, Stephanie de Gooyer, Alastair Hunt, Linda Maxwell, and Samuel Moyn). This new understanding, however, has met intensive resistance, which has manifested itself in nativist, nationalist, racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant populist movements in the so-called developed world. Additionally, traditional ways of granting citizenship on the basis of descent have been utilized to constraint citizenship. In the U.S., whose citizenship laws use both descent (or just sanguinis) and birthright (or jus soli), movements have emerged that want to change its laws to constrain citizenship solely to jus sanguinis (see Leo R. Chavez). This Special Issue aims to focus on the relationship between citizenship, membership, and rights, as they are related to these two sources of citizenship, namely: blood descent and birthright. The focus on this “biopolitical” genealogy of citizenship could take the form of investigations into race, sex, gender, and disability, and how these are used as exclusions, or privations, from citizenship. Another important lens to look at the constraint of citizenship, i.e., constraint on the right to have rights, is what has been called “crimigration”—the implementation of immigration policies through the criminalization of would be migrants.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the assistant editor Cassie Hu ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Authors submitting to this special issue, the journal would not charge the APCs.

Prof. Dr. Eduardo Mendieta
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• citizenship
• rights
• membership
• jus soli
• jus sanguinis
• reconstruction amendments to the constitution
• race
• gender
• ethnicity
• country of origin