ABSTRACT

In citizenship studies, particularly those focused upon the emergence of citizenship in Western Europe, the creation of the legal status of the citizen is often depicted as a linear process. A number of studies demonstrate Europe’s claim to inherit citizenship traditions from the Greek polis and the Roman republic, through to ‘civilized’ and civic Christian European traditions. The European-oriented narrative places citizenship and civic identity as coming first out of urban cities of the Occident, spaces where groups defined their identities, rights, and duties (Isin, 2005 ). Citizenship emerged in modern times as the definitive type of belonging to a nationstate that recognizes specific rights and provisions for its inhabitants. A number of historians who have analysed citizenship as a linear process of identity acquisition and negotiations of power relations neglected to factor in the discourses, behaviours, and struggles by colonial subjects that created definitions of citizenship, and the importance of the circulation of these ideas and practices in the global South (Miller, 2000 ).