Is there a meaningful way in which we can talk about global citizenship in the contemporary context?

Résumé du document

In his famous address at the Sorbonne in Paris, Albert Einstein laid ironically the stress on the very limits of the concept of “global citizenship”. Indeed, even though the process of globalisation of trade, science or more generally speaking “culture” have unquestionably aroused international and, above all, supra-national common stakes, the sentiment of belonging to a country and the concrete exercise of rights and liberties have remained fiercely linked with the concept of the nation-state, that is to say “territoriality”. The major problem is that, in the actual and cumulative process of globalisation –nevertheless still restrained to certain domains, above all economic-related –, the concept of citizenship itself has appeared changing and even versatile insofar as it has been equally used by antagonistic actors (defenders of Anglo-Saxon economic liberal theories and alter-globalisation defenders, pro-EU and sovereignists, liberal intellectuals and nationalists…) with different meanings and different purposes. So because citizenship has always been a concept liable to different definitions and interpretations, the context of the outstripping of the nation-state has led to a certain “speculation” that had created an immense gap between those who claim that being a Man is enough to be called a “citizen of the world” as a part of the “cosmos” (the rationally organised universe) and those, at the other extremity of the spectrum, who argue that cosmopolitanism is an empty utopia with the absence of global, supranational political institutions and common rights and duties.

Extraits

[...] Argued by geographers and political theorists like Christopher Harvie (The Rise of regional Europe, 1994). [...]

[...] But once again economic integration has predominated in the EU while political “spill over” jammed and EU citizenship has remained very symbolic while facing difficulty to generate genuine support from the population (although the transferring of competencies to EU supranational institutions have initiated great interest for EU decision-making process from both economic and non economic lobbies but also from regions But the situation is all the more complex since the de-nationalised vanguard public opinion capable of outstripping national concerns as well as understanding international issues has not found significant concrete prolongations in citizenship in terms of rights. In this perspective, the EU legislation giving political rights to EU citizens in every member states since Maastricht (1992) has remained essentially theoretical for lack of real promotion and interest and due to bureaucratic barriers. Then, even more decisive has been the “tenacious territoriality” (Heffernan, p.239) that has limited the very idea of global citizenship beyond “abstract” cosmopolitanism. [...]

[...] For all that we can argue that the “principle of nationality” has created a peculiar network of boundaries in Europe after two World Wars partly due to nationalist dialectics and the focus on territory. On the one hand, WWI was a consequence of the denial of nationalist aspirations by the “Central Empires” (Germany and Austria-Hungary)[11] and led to a redrawing of frontiers (fall of two empires and birth of 6 new states). But human instability did not disappear as ethnic groups were still divided (Hungarians), states still had to deal with important minorities in Czechoslovakia) . [...]

[...] So we will have to discuss the meaning of global citizenship in the contemporary context with both conceptions. Secondly, citizenship has historically been strongly linked with the development and the consolidation (either a priori or a posteriori) of the nation-state. Indeed, although the legacy of Stoic cosmopolitanism found immense repercussions in Humanism, as exemplified by Descartes' universal reason[4] and later in Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant who claimed the “cosmopolitan destiny of humanity” which did not have vocation to fragmentation and war[5], the development of the typically European paradigm of the nation-state since the 16th and 17th century (and first a Western European feature embodied by the examples of Great Britain, Spain and France in the 16th and 17th century, then by Italy and Germany in the late 19th century) favoured the more restricted definition of citizenship. [...]

[...] By concrete mobilisation, these new actors have initiated a dynamic of internationalisation of citizenship insofar as they have opened a space for global reflection and commitment to supranational or foreign stakes. But these actors are very different and often promote conflicting values. For instance, transnational corporations, defined by the UN as “firms that possesses at least one branch in a foreign country”[15] have developed global strategies in order to reduce the costs of production and have become privileged forces of “standardisation” and imposition of liberal values (in a good and a negative sense). [...]