ABSTRACT
It has been made abundantly clear that, in an age of globalization, citizenship has to deal with continuing difference of an economic, social, political and legal sort. This is due to the ‘displacement’ of populations that migrate to and fro in search of work and wellbeing in burgeoning but changing global markets. When these go into recession – as in the Asian financial crisis of 1997–99 – millions are obliged to return ‘home’ as employment collapses:
We have entered a period of huge displacement of population. I use the word displacement deliberately, for when the populations of entire regions leave, this is not because they want to leave but because they are obliged to by the situation. In fact, what is called globalization, the extending of the economy to the globe, goes together with the uprooting of entire peoples, abandoned by the flight of productive structures, left to the blind forces of the world market. Even the rich countries undergo these changes fully… (Nair, 1997, p. 73)
