After a two-year hiatus, the GLOBALCIT Annual Conference was back in full force last week, as it welcomed 30 scholars over two days at the European University Institute. The theme, ‘Citizenship and political development: Membership contestation and democratic norms around the world’, encompassed topics spanning migrant voting rights, democratic participation, and contestation over gaining and losing citizenship.
Encouraging interdisciplinary discussion, it hosted political scientists, lawyers, normative theorists, and methodologists. Both junior and senior scholars presented country case studies, comparative analyses, and global datasets.
Victoria Finn, a speaker at the event and a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre, said: “It was such a treat to present in-person alongside such stellar citizenship scholars, especially since the 2018 GLOBALCIT Annual Conference jumpstarted my research and connected me with the EUI and the Max Weber Programme."
In the keynote speech, Sara Wallace Goodman (University of California, Irvine) offered critical reflections focused on conceptual stretching in citizenship studies, especially exporting western notions and theories to the rest of the world. As per Goodman’s advice, this research is advancing the field of citizenship studies by challenging concepts and theories created in advanced western democracies, as well as building new typologies and theories based on other understandings of citizenship. This research also reflects the direction of the GLOBALCIT’s freely accessible databases, publications, and country reports, to produce and disseminate valuable information on citizenship.
Photo album from the event.