At present, dominant trends in citizenship scholarship frame the question of citizenship in terms of two opposing perspectives: one particularistic (exclusive), one universalistic (inclusive). The politics of citizenship is posited here as a trade-off between these diverging models. This first chapter argues that a new growing body of citizenship literature – explored here through the work of Etienne Balibar, Engin Isin and R. B. J. Walker – provides an alternative focus. It does so by challenging this dualistic framework as the necessary basis for discussions about citizenship. As the above quotations indicate, in their work Balibar, Isin and Walker emphasise the link between politics and subjectivity; in particular, how the latter takes its meaning from the former. It does not take for granted that subjects engage in statist politics, as sovereign autonomous beings.

This chapter argues that existing citizenship scholarship needs to be seen as one overarching debate which presents a spectrum of possible, yet limited, interpretive choices which are defined by a particular reality of what it means to ‘be’ a citizen (a political subject) in terms of sovereignty and autonomy, rather than a series of competing debates. The first part of the chapter explores the dominant intellectual and theoretical explanations for the two main theoretical models which have dominated citizenship scholarship.