ABSTRACT
The case of citizens abroad and how a certain duty of care applies, or is at stake, is an important window to explore how the political community is constituted beyond the contours of territorialized belonging and its definition through the legal status of citizenship or residency. The symbolic constitution of the (de)territorial political community is important for understanding how regimes of citizenship are at work, and in what ways. Moreover, citizenship participates fully in the symbolic processes constituting, performing or transforming collective political identities because citizenship structures both vertical and horizontal relations citizens hold within and outside these constructed political communities. The claims to extend the duty of care beyond its traditional territorial or formal limits by citizens may constitute what Engin Isin terms acts of citizenship. Acts of citizenship offer an analytical tool to approach the question how one transforms “oneself from a subject to a claimant”.
