What is citizenship?

That was the question we tried to answer in class today.  The readings all addressed the impact of international trade laws on citizenship.  One article (by an economist) talked about how globalization is redefining notions of citizenship.  Which raises some interesting questions about the nature of the actors on the world stage: who they are (people, nation-states, corporations or international institutions?) and what rights and responsibilities they should have. She argues that neoliberal economic policies that favor transnational entities such as corporations and international organizations over national sovereignty effectively give them (these large transnational and international institutions) the "economic rights" originally meant to protect people.

I wrote a sorta long diatribe:

While I think calling transnational and international institutions the new holders of citizenship in a globalized neo-liberal economy is a powerful, attention-getting way to make the point that the process known as "globalization" gives a tremendous amount of power to essentially non-democratic institutions, I'm not sure that is the best way to go about challenging the impact of economic globalization on human societies at this point. At this stage of the game we are long past the question of whether corporations should have rights. Under the current system, they clearly already do and most people are no longer surprised by this fact. What we need to do now is bring the conversation back to the point where it is possible to express surprise and outrage at the very idea that non-human entities should have human rights. That means not just stating the fact that they do have rights are can therefore be considered the new citizens in the globalized economy. It means refusing to let go of the assumption that citizenship has always been and should always remain centered in human beings both as individuals and collectively (as in third generation group rights). Losing that assumption means that we might continue to be able to argue that the new (corporate) citizens should do this or that because humans have certain human rights also but that's far less powerful than arguing that these non-human entities should not be accorded human rights in the first place. Why should corporations and institutions owe anything at all to individual human beings if they themselves are accorded equal status with the ensuing human rights? We will have lost the fundamental premise that the notion of citizenship can never belong to anything other than human beings.

So what do you think?  Are corporations effectively the new citizens in an era of neo-liberal globalization?  What does it mean to be a citizen? We started our conversation in class trying to define citizenship.  Of course we start out thinking that's easy.  But look at all the definitions we came up with: Citizenship is a set of rights and responsibilities based on one's place of birth.  Citizenship is a cultural affinity to a particular location, a sense of belonging, part of one's identity.  Citizenship is a legal status bestowed upon people by a sovereign nation.  More?

Defining citizenship is important because it defines who the actors that create democracy are.  So I said what if we say that citizens are the basic unit of political society (on whom democracy is based).  If citizens are people than people are the basic units who decide the nature of the political system under which they live.  If citizens are corporations than it's the corporations who decide.  You can argue whether one is better than the other but at least we know what we're talking about.

Our Human Rights Prof (HRP) said her work lately centers on a new definition of citizenship that would go beyond historical definitions (hegemonic discourses) that center citizenship within civil and political rights discourses and within social/cultural homogenetic concepts and include the marginalized (subaltern) groups that get excluded in those traditional definitions.  Just as soon as she said that the bell rang so to speak (we don't actually have a bell but, you know) and time was up and she said see ya tomorrow!  Which left me in the middle of writing this all down!  50 minute classes should be illegal in higher education!  I couldn't believe that.  I wanted to hear more about how to define citizenship in a way that includes 1.) people only and 2.) all people.  Hopefully she'll talk about it tomorrow but wouldn't it be nice if all classes in higher ed were so exciting!

Comments

[Lorenzo]

I would agree that corporations have been granted rights normally accorded to citizens in the context of globalization, hoewver, I would agree with your challenge to framing it that way.

A way of framing this debate that I have found persuasive has been the method of explicating the contrast between the rights bestowed on trans-national corporations and those restricted or denied to people and workers as part of the same process.

What we have now is a situation where capital, elites and TNCs are gaining an unprecedented freedom of movement on the global stage while labor markets remain tightly segmented and the flow of people accross borders is actually becoming more rather than less restricted. This also ties in to transnational networks of 'illegial immigration' and undocumented and guest workers that are globalized on very different terms than TNCs and elites.

[barb]

Yeah, see, I don't like framing it like that. You're saying argue that since TNCs and other international institutions have rights, the rights of people should be equal to institutional rights. I mean, sure, that's one way to make the point but I still think non-human entities should not have the rights of humans.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the best argument of this sort is made in David Korten's book, When Corporations Rule the World.

[Bitch]

I just love reading this blog.

There's a literature out there that criticizes corporations and the way, in the US, we've defined them as persons. In doing so, corporations get let off the hook in numerous ways. Too sleepy to rehearse it all, but I'm surprised it didn't come up in the reading. It's one of the foundational principles of the anti-globalization movement -- at least from what I've read of them.

[Lorenzo]

Yeah, see, I don't like framing it like that. You're saying argue that since TNCs and other international institutions have rights, the rights of people should be equal to institutional rights. I mean, sure, that's one way to make the point but I still think non-human entities should not have the rights of humans.

Oh, I agree with you on this! I meant that contrasting the rights given to TNCs with those denied people forms a useful background to criticizing the granting of those rights to corporations.