Four Waves of Citizenship Scholarship: A Critical Appraisal

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Conceptual Clarification 101 (Table 12)

Abstract

In this paper, I present a historical-comparative approach to citizenship studies grounded in Marshall’s trilogy of citizenship, clustering the studies chronologically into four waves beginning in the 1950s. Thematically, citizenship scholarship is grouped by the intersections of civic, political, and social rights, nation-states, transnationalism, post-nationalism, empire-states, citizenship’s empire, and empires’ citizens. The first wave corresponds to legal and political citizenship from 1950 to 1969. The second wave encompasses social rights, welfare states, identities, and feminist perspectives from 1970 to 1989. The third wave focuses on nation-states, transnationalism, and post-nationalism from the 1990s to the 2000s. The fourth wave, named the longue durée, refers to a period of empire-states, citizenship’s empire, and empires’ citizens, commencing in the 2000s and continuing to the present. Ultimately, I argue that citizenship scholarship progresses through waves, responding to current economic and political concerns by acknowledging and transforming insights from previous waves.

Author

• Seyma Özdemir, University of California, Santa Barbara