ABSTRACT
The dramatic changes that have occurred throughout the modern nationstate system, especially since the end of World War II and more recently, have engendered a renewed and increasing interest in issues of citizenship and rights. Public rights and responsibilities, rules and constraints, in terms of citizenship, national identity, and resources, are being renegotiated and recast everywhere in response to world-level pressures and local developments. Indeed, interest in these concepts as political and cultural formations, in their institutional and organizational determinants and effects, and in related transnational processes have brought into question the fundamental nature of nation, state, polity, and individual membership in the broadest sense. More to the point, changing notions of citizenship and rights have again been placed squarely on the sociological agenda, leading to explorations of related forms, legitimacy, jurisdiction, and practice in the contemporary world.
