Interrogations of Citizenship and Nationality in the Global South (Pre-Recorded)

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel broadens contemporary citizenship and migration scholarship by focusing on how citizenship operates in Global South contexts, including in the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on the Global South, the panel’s papers promote pluralism in the citizenship and migration literature using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. The first two papers concern the rights of migrant residents in host states in the Global South. Frost explores configurations of citizenship where individuals can possess a state’s passport but not its nationality using original qualitative data and process tracing on Jordan’s policies toward Palestinian refugee groups. Sadiq and Tsourapas also use process tracing to examine the development of a transnational social contract based on labor migration between states in the Global South, and how that social contract has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The second two papers contribute to emerging scholarship on expanding the rights of emigrant citizens from host states in the Global South. Lori uses an extreme case study and statistical analysis to assess her concept of mobility diplomacy and to explore the novel policies states in the Global South employ to privilege the cross-border mobility of their citizens. Finally, Wellman uses a mixed-methods approach to examine the rapidly emerging trend of diaspora enfranchisement in sub-Saharan Africa, tracing its origins to the adoption of new constitutions and more robust national citizenship rights. Together, the panel expands our theoretical and empirical understanding of the substance and significance of citizenship and migrant rights in historically understudied regions.

(Pre-Recorded discussant)

Sub Unit

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Individual Presentations

• Citizenship Spectrums: Misalignments of Nationality and Passports in Jordan - Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech

• The Transnational Social Contract in the Global South - Kamal Sadiq, University of California, Irvine; Gerasimos Tsourapas, University of Glasgow

• Mobility Diplomacy: How States in the Global South Maximize Passport Power - Noora Anwar Lori, Boston University

• Citizenship, Constitutional Reform, and Diaspora Voting Rights in Africa - Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Williams College

Chair

• Erin Aeran Chung Johns Hopkins University

Discussant

• Lahra Smith Georgetown University