Citizens Without Frontiers

"States define who their citizens are and exert control over their life and movements. But how does such power persist in a global world where people, ideas, and products constantly cross the borders of what the states see as their sovereign territory? This groundbreaking work sets to examine and interprets such challenges to offer a new way of thinking about citizenship. Abandoning the sovereignty principle, it develops a new image of citizenship using the connectedness principle. To do so, it interprets acts of citizenship by following "activist citizens" across the world through case studies, from Wikileaks and the Gaza flotilla to China's virtual world and Darfur. Written by a leader in the field, this accessible and original work imagines citizens without frontiers as a politics without community and belonging, inclusion without exclusion, where the frontier becomes a form of otherness that citizens erase or create. This unique work brings forth a new and creative way to approach citizenship beyond boundaries that will appeal to anyone studying citizenship, social movements, and migration."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover 1 HalfTitle 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Preface 11 1 Of Those Whose Acts Traverse Frontiers 14 What does ‘without frontiers’ signify? 15 Professions, citizens, activists 17 Citizens without frontiers 18 Interrogating and transgressing frontiers 19 ‘We, the people’ and ‘we, the connected’ 22 Making citizens activists 24 Three genres of writing 25 Act 1. Of treason: WikiLeaks 28 Act 2. Of rage: Rachel Corrie 31 Act 3. Of disobedience: Conscientious or civil? 33 2 ‘We, the People’ 41 What is called sovereignty? 41 Narrating sovereignties 43 How did the nation conquer the state? 45 The invention of ‘we, the people’ as the nation 50 Counter-narratives of other peoples, popolo, peuple and populism 54 Sovereignty as a question of a whole and its parts 58 Act 4. Of defence: Minuteman Civil Defense Corps 60 Act 5. Of censoring: The Golden Shield Project 63 Act 6. Of espionage: Stuxnet 65 Act 7. Of assassination: Drones 67 Act 8. Of writing: Banksy 69 Act 9. Of solidarity: Strangers into Citizens 71 3 ‘We, the Connected’ 83 Are we all connected? 84 Of ethical and political subjectivities 88 Counter-narratives of connectivity: Cyberhackers and hacktivists 92 Genealogies, topologies, connectivity 96 Paradoxes, multiplicities, heterogeneities 99 Politics without ‘we, the people’? 100 Act 10. Of identification: We are all Khaled Said 102 Act 11. Of hacking: LulzSec 104 Act 12. Of defiance: No One Is Illegal 107 Act 13. Of staging: Climate Camp 110 4 Enacting Citizenship 121 Citizenship as political subjectivity 122 Disobedience as enacting citizenship 124 Beginning something new 126 Subjectivity, performativity, enactment 132 Acts of citizenship 143 Investigating acts 144 Activism as traversal citizenship 148 Act 14. Of speech: Waging Peace 149 Act 15. Of fury: Mariyam Manike 151 5 Citizens without Frontiers 160 Traversing frontiers 162 Why political subjectivity without frontiers? 163 Why acts of citizenship? 164 Why without frontiers? 166 Why traversing frontiers? 167 Why not global activists? 171 Act 16. Of declaration: ‘We, the Roma Nation’ 174 Act 17. Of resistance: International Solidarity Movement 177 Act 18. Of sharing: Open Rights Group 179 6 Emancipating (Acts of) Citizenship 187 Taking the state apart – from the nation 187 Emancipate your colonies! 189 Occupy everywhere: The enjoyment of being political 191 The shaking of nations 193 Between no longer and not yet 195 Act 19. Of enfranchisement: If the world could vote 201 Act 20. Of music: Barenboim without words 204 Bibliography 210 Index 232 Of Those Whose Acts Traverse Frontiers -- We, The People -- We, The Connected -- Enacting Citizenship -- Citizens Without Frontiers. Engin F. Isin. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Isin offers a new way of thinking about citizenship by interpreting citizen acts that cross borders and by moving away from the sovereignty principle.