ABSTRACT
In recent years, the liberal project of building national societies of formally equal, rights-bearing citizens has increasingly been challenged and discredited. Governments have implemented dramatic restructuring policies in both the North and the South, while global pressures for international migration have increased. Polarization between different populations has augmented, notably between international business and the growing populations of low income and jobless ‘others’. Ideologies such as Keynesianism, which supported the post-World War II expansion of welfare services as citizenship entitlements have been replaced by neoliberal clarion calls for deficit-reduction and global competitiveness. In line with these trends, policy makers across the political spectrum are seeking new definitions of state/citizen relations, emphasizing responsibilities rather than rights of citizens. Feminist, Marxist, liberal and social movement theorists are reformulating citizenship in relation to these changing conditions of a post-cold war era (for summaries of contemporary debates on citizenship, see Andrews, 1991; Bulmer and Rees, 1996; Kymlicka and Norman 1994; and Yuval-Davis, 1996).
