ABSTRACT
When globalization processes (see Chapter 1), new migration patterns (Chapter 3) and the actions of new political subjects (Chapter 6) impact on the historical traditions of citizenship described in Chapter 2, radical changes ensue. The context for a citizenship based on belonging to a single nation is being eroded. A version of citizenship is developing that is at least as novel as the citizenship of a modern nation-state was when compared with the citizenship of an ancient city-state (Constant, 1990; Davidson, 1996a). Its emergence is uneven. Most societies and polities have still not got beyond the citizenship of the nation-state, which we can expect to remain a dominant form into the twenty-first century. The new level of citizenship is emerging in the same way as that of the nation-state did in the earlier context of city-states. Long before the constellation of city-states that made up Spain, Italy and Germany was superseded by the contemporary nation-state form already present in England and France, the new types of state had started to influence the old ones to alter their practices of citizenship. Above all, the democratic quality of city-states was replaced by an absolutism that paralleled that in the new nation-states.
