Global Social Inequalities and the Coloniality of Citizenship, Past and Present A Conversation Between Manuela Boatcă and Michaela Benson

Abstract

This conversation between Michaela Benson and Manuela Boatcă focuses on the coloniality of citizenship. Where dominant understandings of citizenship link this to the emergence of the nation and its national political community, this conversation considers what we can learn about present-day global social inequalities from examining the development of citizenship through a close consideration of Manuela’s work on this topic. It takes as its starting point those excluded from the rights of political membership through the development of national communities, to make visible how citizenship and the alleged equality achieved through citizenship rights were acquired at the expense of gendered and racialized “Others.” As the conversation unfolds, the enduring colonial entanglements in the present-day global migration and citizenship regime—the coloniality of citizenship—are revealed, and alongside these, new insights into the citizenship and border struggles within and between nation states.