What does globalisation mean for citizenship?

Around the world, citizens are finding new spaces and opportunities to engage with governments and other institututions. This is influenced by globalisation, changes in governance and emerging forms of transnational social movements.

Some would argue that citizenship is being de-linked from geographical territory; that power is becoming more multi-layered and multi-scaled; and governance increasingly involves both state and non-state actors - often transnationally.

How does this give rise to new meanings and identities of citizenship, and new forms and formations of citizen action?

The group Citizen Engagement in a Globalising World at the DRC is looking at this question. While a great deal of work has been done on transnational citizen action, the work of this group is unique as each project examines vertical links from the local and the global taking, in particular, a citizen’s perspective.

While there is much literature on the concept of global citizenship, few studies of the theme are actually grounded in studies of concrete cases of how global power actually affects citizens’ own perceptions of how and when they can engage.

The group is made up of fifteen researchers, carrying out field projects in India , Nigeria , Kenya , the Gambia , Brazil and South Africa as well as other cross-national projects in Latin America . The projects look across a number of sectors –e.g. the environment, trade, education, livelihoods, health and HIV/AIDS, work and occupational disease, agriculture and land. And look at types of engagement, ranging from campaigns and social movements, to citizen participation in new institutionally designed spaces and fora.

 Implications for donors

Emerging findings have important implications for donor policies and others. Much policy work is focused on different levels such as nation-states, global institutions, and civil society actors. The work of this group suggests these levels are highly inter-connected in structuring the forms and possibilities for citizen to engage.

As a result, rather than look at the separate levels and actors, it may be necessary to look more vertically at how polices and strategies cut across the levels simultaneously.

For instance, in the work by Mayo and Gaventa on the campaign to meet the Millennium Development Goal on global education for all, it is clear that integrated work across local, national and international levels is critical – yet little support exists at the donor and policy level to encourage and sustain this integration.

The work also highlights the growing influence of non-state global actors such as the Global Fund and multinational institutions and the complicated dynamics that emerge between global, national and local players in this new terrain.

While there is a great deal of debate on how and whether national governments can hold global actors to account, the ability of global players to ‘forum-hop’- that is to choose the places where they wish to engage with citizens - gives them a new form of unaccountable power.

For instance, the Global Fund exercises enormous influence on determining policies around health, yet where and how citizens engage with them is not clear. Similarly, the role of multinationals in linking directly with women’s self help groups in rural India , changes the relation of these groups to the local and national state for livelihoods support.

At the same time, the research suggests a number of ways in which citizens are developing a new sense of rights and claim-making vis-à-vis global actors. Whether this be the claims of displaced people (literally people without citizenship) on humanitarian agencies, or the claims of local actors on regional and global trade issues, or of people affected by HIV/AIDS on global health policy.

In some cases, but not always, getting involved in transnational action seems to be strengthening a global sense of solidarity and belonging. The emergence of a new sense of rights and international interconnection may be contributing steps towards building a sense of global citizenship, which will continue to affect where and how citizens engage on key development issues.