ABSTRACT
Accelerated globalization in the last decade has reoriented our thinking on the relationship between international law, state sovereignty, and individual rights and duties.2 This is especially true in relation to international migration, which is affecting an ever-larger proportion of the world’s population. Changes in the flow of people are not merely expressed by the increase in the number and frequency of people who move across state borders, but by the number of states involved in the flow, and the complexity of migrant composition and patterns of their movement. As a result of this global dispersion, myriad social networks and civil organizations emerge that span territories under the jurisdiction of sovereign states. A transnational society, alongside an international system of states and a globalized market, is in the process of formation.3 What, then, is the political status of the individual embedded in a transnational system of governance involving divergent cultures and institutions? Who is a citizen, and to whom does she make her claim of deprivation of rights, and for whom does she fulfill obligations? What are the rights and obligations of citizenship beyond those granted by the nation-state? From the point of view of the nation-states, how and by what means will the flow of citizens and others be promoted and regulated so as to maintain and enhance national competitiveness in a global economy? And how can such national interests be coordinated without serious inequality and conflict in an interstate system? These are some of the questions being raised in the literature.4
