Globalizing inequality: The politics of citizenship as government in an age of security

Globalizing Inequality: The Politics of Citizenship as Government in an Age of Security critically investigates how citizenship governs the conduct of individuals and populations across states and how the politics of citizenship is changing within the context of globalization and securitization processes, particularly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Many countries (particularly Anglo-American countries such the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) have seized this moment to implement new border control and detention arrangements, many of which were being developed prior to September 11, 2001 in response to managing populations within the context of more open territorial borders.; The principle argument of the dissertation is that citizenship is globalizing as a regime of government. Increasingly, citizenship involves new configurations of power and collaborations of governing. This includes the harmonization around border controls and detention policies between countries in the Global North; the displacement of state power to other actors such as international organizations and private companies; and finally, a shift towards governing through border controls and detention practices that control and discipline the individual body. Taken together, such changes in governing suggest that citizenship is now becoming a globalizing regime of governing mobility.; This dissertation makes a critical intervention into debates about the impact of globalization processes on citizenship. The work argues that the transformation of the sovereign state in response to globalization does not mean the erosion of citizenship as an institution and regime of governing. Rather, from a critical perspective, using Foucault's work on government and biopolitics, globalization has actually strengthened citizenship, making it a more powerful and efficient regime of governing individuals, populations, and their movement between and across borders. The dissertation illustrates this through two examples. Border controls (e.g., identification systems using biometrics, risk-profiling and data mining) control mobility but also produce gendered, classed and racialized populations based on notions of risk. Detention practices (e.g., extraterritorial detention camps, extraordinary rendition and security certificates) are designed to contain the mobility of high-risk groups, often removing them from society altogether in a type of illiberal biopolitical governing of society.