Citizenship: New Trajectories in Law

Today, many anti-racist, anti-capitalist, migrant, ecological, feminist, and queer struggles revolve around ‘human rights’. At the same time, and despite intersectional campaigns, they risk staying fragmented and disjointed, locked in a national citizenship regime. Can an imaginary of planetary citizenship, as a transversal movement, coalesce these struggles into an effective force against the right? Can making citizenship rights claims transform progressive movements into planetary movements? The panel will examine these political questions raised by Engin Isin’s book, Citizenship (2024). After the book presentation of Engin Isin, Kristine Krause, Stefania Milan and Darshan Vigneswaran will join in a paneldiscussion. Moderator: Diana Zacca Thomaz. 

About the speakers 

Engin Isin is a distinguished scholar in political theory and international politics, renowned for his contributions to theorising citizenship as struggle. He writes about how people exercise political agency through acts of citizenship, with a focus on performative practices aimed at countering domination and promoting emancipation. He is a professor emeritus of international politics at Queen Mary University of London. 

Stefania Milan is Professor of Critical Data Studies at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Media Studies and a Research Associate with the Chair in AI & Democracy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute.

Kristine Krause is an anthropologist (University of Amsterdam) working at the intersections of political and medical anthropology, interested in subjectivities and health, citizenship, and care. Krause was NIAS fellow in the year group 2019/20, where she worked on the book project Care in the city. Multiple Articulations of Care and Healing.

Darshan Vigneswaran is Co-Director of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Amsterdam and a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society, WITS University. His research aims to understand and explain deep changes in the structure of international politics and is primarily interested in how territory has been reconfigured in response to changing patterns of human mobility and settlement.