ABSTRACT
For the purposes of this paper, noncitizenship is taken to denote the condition of being where access to basic political rights is precarious and insecure. Noncitizenship is not the same as bare humanity, by which I mean a state of existence stripped of all rights and dependent on international human rights law (see Agamben 1998 ). Although the conditions
of existence that defi ne the life of the noncitizen can be likened to conditions of bare humanity, the way I use the concept here steers away from such comparisons. Th is is because the underlying objective of the paper is to draw out and explore the political dimension of noncitizenship – the extent to which noncitizenship, as an umbrella term, successfully captures and challenges the exclusions, inequalities, injustices and naturalisations that accompany citizenship politics. Does noncitizenship transgress the relationship with citizenship, in line with the intentions of the special issue, or does it end up reproducing the relationship with citizenship that it seeks to overcome?
