Intersectional global citizenship: gendered and racialized renderings

Abstract

This article intervenes in the emerging field of global citizenship studies by following in the footsteps of critical studies of national citizenship, which have shown that the seemingly neutral features of citizenship are gendered and racialized. The notion of “global citizenship” has gained currency in recent years and while there is not yet a canonized account of global citizenship, it is possible to identify the main shared features of different global citizenship accounts. While the “global” of global citizenship could denote the universality of the concept in contrast to national citizenship, this promise of inclusivity is not fulfilled. This article provides an intersectional reading of global citizenship theories and examples. Dominant global citizenship accounts, I argue, contain exclusionary and marginalizing tendencies and are biased toward a certain type of global subject whose responsibility is based on benevolence. A more inclusive and radical account of global citizenship can be built by drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model to rethink responsibility and by more firmly grounding it in an understanding of globalization as linked to historical and present structural inequalities.

Keywords:

• globalization
• citizenship
• civil society
• gender
• “race”
• intersectionality
• development
• feminism

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the support from the Fund for Women Graduates (FfWG). The author would like to thank the anonymous referees as well as the editor for their constructive comments. An earlier version of this article was edited by Takeo David Hymans.