Transborder citizenship: an outcome of legal pluralism within transnational social fields

Abstract

Transborder citizenship: an outcome of legal pluralism within transnational social fields forthcoming in Mobile People, Mobile Law: Expanding Legal Relations in a Contracting World. Franz Bender Beckman and Keebit Bender Beckman eds. London: Ashgate Nina Glick Schiller In this paper I will discuss the implications of migrants’ transnational connections and networks for the concept of citizenship and propose the concept of the transborder citizen. Transborder citizens are people who live their lives across the borders of two or more nation-states, participating in the normative regime, legal and institutional system and political practices of these various states. As all other citizens, they claim rights and privileges from government but transborder citizens claim and act on a relationship to more than one government. The fact that within the past decade an impressive number of states have adopted some form of dual citizenship or dual nationality is an important foundation of the development of transborder citizenship. But an understanding of the development of transborder citizenship takes us beyond legal definitions of citizenship into the subject of social and cultural citizenship and the multiple experiences of living within plural systems of laws, customs and values. The political ideas, practices and claims-making of transborder citizens confront us with the task of assessing an important and unexplored outcome of legal pluralism within a transnational social field. By living their lives across borders, transborder citizens can become a social force in reshaping the workings of legal domains in more than one state. This does not make transborder citizens a single political force. Because the same transnational social field may contain individuals with differing interests and agendas, the degree of unity and