Challenging the political notion of citizenship

The text examines the structural paradox of citizenship, understood as both a vehicle of democratic inclusion and a mechanism of exclusion. While citizenship establishes the subject of rights and political agency, it simultaneously produces the non-citizen as outsider, revealing its intrinsic boundary-drawing function. Drawing on Étienne Balibar’s notion of the “double scene” of citizenship, the paper highlights the tension between its universalist promise of equality and its historical entanglement with stratification, colonialism, and state violence. Citizenship thus operates not only as a legal status but also as a political and epistemological framework that determines recognition, visibility, and belonging. In the context of transnational migration, supranational governance, and growing cultural pluralism, the traditional, territorially bounded model of citizenship appears increasingly inadequate. Engaging thinkers from Aristotle to Arendt, Habermas, Benhabib, and Wieviorka, the paper proposes reimagining citizenship beyond inherited status toward a performative and participatory practice. It advocates a shift from formal political membership to a broader conception of social and cultural citizenship grounded in plurality, ethical responsibility, and shared political agency in an interconnected world.