ABSTRACT

It would seem that the world of the twenty-first century is a world of change and flux, but like centuries long gone, the contemporary world is also a restless one. The increasing application of information technology and digital communications has opened up new possibilities for the exchange of information and transportation, and provides greater comfort and ease in the way traditional functions are carried out. As people and cultures of the world come together in terms of increased transborder transportation, immigration and changing residential patterns, the traditional idea of national borders becomes increasingly challenged. The state as we know it has always been the basis for inclusion and exclusion by virtue of the presence of national borders that demarcate one state from the other, but as these seemingly become more irrelevant in our new condition, the ideal of the state itself must of necessity come under intense pressure. It is in this regard that the issue of global citizenship has become the new idealism in contemporary discourse on the subject matter of citizenship. Global citizenship has become a growing fad, “much more than an abstract or seemingly elusive ideal, espoused mainly by assumed intellectuals and visionaries” (Schattle, 2008, p. 159)—to the effect that the ideal is a form of self-awareness and a shared consciousness or state of mind among persons either in their own self-reflection of the world around them or in their engagement with others in the mainstream of public discourse.