ABSTRACT
This chapter explores ways in which the political honeycomb of territorial statehood deforms the workings of cross-border world society. Restrictions on movement across borders based on citizenship inherently give the state undue primacy over society. Inconsistencies between national sovereignty and extraterritorial jurisdiction are also symptomatic of the new class tightening its authority across countries, while confining the political agency of ordinary people within them. The political looms large over the social, in ways that a pluralist account of liberty must challenge. Sovereignty and liberal projects of cosmopolitan diversity also come into tension with double standards on which countries are expected to open to outsiders and to what extent. Many Asian countries insist on opting out from the Western trend towards diversity, and on being ‘not immigrant countries’. A cosmopolitan project of liberty and pluralism requires untangling state power from the circuits of membership and engagement that cut across borders.
