Abstract
Extrapolating a recent conceptualization of caste from India to the global level, this article argues that persons experience cross-national inequalities via their citizenship as a caste marker. Rather than imagine castes as features of the fixed pre-modern Hindu social order, the article posits that castes are variable modern ascriptive social hierarchies subject to contestation and change in which economic and social distinctions are maintained through physical and symbolic violence. The study shows how, globally, nation-states exert physical and symbolic violence to normalize cross-national inequalities instituting a global citizenship-based caste order. This approach recognizes the importance of both global material relations emphasized by world-systems approaches and of symbolic structures central to global institutionalist approaches. The study also underscores persons’ positions and experiences confronting nation-states’ might. Power struggles concentrated on nation-states result in variability of global relations’ mutually reinforcing material and symbolic dimensions. The author uses caste features that appear ‘essential’ (i.e. ascriptive social closure, ‘ethnic,’ ‘religious,’ and ‘purity’ distinctions) as heuristics for identifying possible locations of caste construction and contestation, and identifies citizenship rules, nation-states’ territorial nature, nationalism, and visa, border, and naturalization rituals as such caste development sites. Vulnerable groups (stateless persons, refugees, migrants) both challenge the citizenship caste order and experience viscerally its physical and symbolic violence.
Introduction
Persons experience cross-national inequalities through the citizenship they are assigned at birth. Citizenship denotes participation in a political community and a source of identity (Carens, 2000; Cohen, 1999). Citizenship is also a legal status linking persons to nation-states supposedly entitling them to rights and protection under nation-states’ laws. Different citizenships afford persons different levels of dignity, wellbeing, and opportunities however (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; Boatcă, 2016; Brubaker, 2015; Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009) constituting a multidimensional hierarchy of citizenship positions. Citizenship is a primarily ascriptive characteristic, as 96.7% of the world’s people reside in their country of birth (International Organization for Migration, 2017). The 3.3% of persons who have migrated internationally are likely to experience disadvantage (culturally, economically, legally, and/or politically) compared to native-born persons in their new country of residence. As loci of power, nation-states deploy cultural, economic, legal, and political mechanisms to enforce citizenship distinctions instituting what amounts to a global citizenship-based caste order. Consequently, persons experience cross-national inequality via their citizenship as a caste marker.
The caste concept acquired prominence as a tool of symbolic domination in the British colonization of India (Dirks, 2001). Caste orders were imagined as fixed systems in which status differences allotted by birth and maintained by cultural (deemed ‘religious’ or ‘ethnic’) norms and practices resulted in high degrees of social closure and in distinct life chances (Dirks, 2001; Weber, 1946). Weber’s (1946) ideal-type caste conceptualization reflects this thinking. Castes as ideal types served to essentialize distinctions, deny history and actors’ agency, and erase the possibility of contestation and change (Dirks, 2001).
Extrapolating the caste concept from the Indian context can serve the emancipatory goal of exposing extreme stratification systems (e.g. racial, feudal orders) (Slate, 2011). Used analogically, caste can elucidate closed ascriptive social hierarchies in which physical and symbolic violence sustain economic and social distinctions (Jodhka, 2016, 2017). Caste features appearing ‘essential’ and ‘fixed’ (i.e. ascriptive social closure, ‘ethnic,’ ‘religious,’ and ‘purity’ distinctions) can be heuristics for identifying possible locations of caste construction and contestation. Globally, nation-states exert physical and symbolic violence to naturalize a citizenship-based caste order solidifying power they have accumulated through economic and political means, for instance through colonial and imperial ventures.
Methodologically, examining a global citizenship-based caste order and its implications on individual experiences necessitates taking the world as unit of analysis, persons as units of observation, and nation-states as the global institutions determining persons’ citizenship positions. Nation-states’ monopoly on political sovereignty is one of the most significant modern global institutional developments (Meyer et al., 1997). The unit of analysis and focus on global inequality come from world-systems theorizing (e.g. Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; Wallerstein et al., 2016). A focus on persons and on their institutional positions owes much to Bourdieu’s (1984, 2000) thinking. This approach allows recognition of global inequality structures in their different mutually reinforcing dimensions (cultural, economic, etc.) while highlighting individual experiences and contestation. It foregrounds underprivileged persons’ positions based on citizenship (e.g. persons with low-caste citizenships, stateless persons, refugees, migrants) and nation-states’ responsibility for their plight.
Nation-state citizenship (referred to here as just citizenship) is among the most consequential statuses influencing persons’ global positions. 1 Citizenship is the mechanism through which persons experience economic inequality between countries (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009; Milanovic, 2010). According to one estimate, citizenship accounts for 60% of persons’ economic fortunes on average 2 (Milanovic, 2010). Cultural processes of othering accompanying colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building, such as Balkanism, gendering, orientalism, and racialization (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; Todorova, 1997), create citizenship-based categorical distinctions (Brubaker, 2015). The resulting cultural citizenship hierarchy is related but not identical to the economic citizenship hierarchy. Citizenship is at the core of a multidimensional global stratification order in which dignity, wellbeing, and opportunities are unequally distributed among different ascriptive categories of persons.
Because of their birth citizenship status, persons find themselves in positions of distinct privilege or lack thereof with extremely limited opportunity for upward mobility in a socially instituted global order characterized by multidimensional inequality. For the privileged castes, the global citizenship order is foundation of freedoms, rights, and opportunities. For the underprivileged, the citizenship caste order is basis of entrapment, risks, and lack of opportunities. Persons with low-caste citizenships 3 and oppressed groups based on citizenship status (stateless persons, refugees, migrants) are more likely to experience poverty, violence, limited economic opportunities, low life expectancy, rights violations, and/or limited freedom of movement than persons with high-caste citizenships. What follows traces aspects of nation-states’ caste-instituting symbolic and physical violence and its effects on persons, caught in a formidable but not immutable institutional complex.
The global citizenship order as a caste order
Despite resistance, caste continues to be applied to stratification orders outside the Indian context, such as US racial inequality (cf. Cox, 1948; Wilkerson, 2020). Contemporary accounts of India’s caste order argue castes are not an exclusively Indian phenomenon (Jodhka, 2016, 2017). Castes’ association with India comes from British colonialism when their prioritization facilitated the subcontinent’s domination (Dirks, 2001). Classical sociological treatments recognize castes’ generality as stratification orders but accentuate their ‘traditional,’ pre-modern, and fixed character linking them with India (Cox, 1948; Weber, 1946). These accounts overlook tensions between the phenomenon’s simultaneously economic and cultural aspects making caste orders variable and the concept translatable. Weber (1946) argues castes’ settled cultural foundations strengthen economic inequalities manifested in distinct lifestyles and privileges. High castes monopolize privileges (e.g. lucrative occupations) through ascriptive social closure based on stigmatization of social relations via conventional hierarchal ‘ethnic’/‘racial’ distinctions and ‘religious’ purity rituals often encoded into laws. Ritualistic prohibitions against cross-caste fraternization prevented citizenry’s development, thought Weber. Cox (1948) rejects caste as applying to US race relations considering the caste system as social and economic societal organization distinct from capitalism. Reiterating many of Weber’s caste features resulting in social closure (e.g. purity rituals, ascription, endogamy, hereditary group occupations), Cox identifies Hinduism as a mechanism producing an economy of functional and uncontested reciprocal obligations.
Building on Bourdieu’s (1984) approach, recognizing not only relations’ material and symbolic dimensions but also power struggles related to both, Jodhka (2016, 2017) proposes a transposable conceptualization of caste orders accommodating change and compatible with modern capitalism. Noting Indian castes’ variability and continuing importance conditioning persons’ economic opportunities in capitalist India, Jodhka (2016, 2017) suggests caste applies to different contexts. Symbolic and physical violence appear central for monopolizing social and cultural capital enabling caste-based economic inequality and caste reproduction in the context of neoliberal capitalism despite ongoing contestation (Jodhka, 2016, 2017).
I adopt Jodhka’s conceptualization of caste, arguing nation-states’ agents employ physical and symbolic violence to normalize cross-national inequalities instituting a global citizenship-based caste order. I contend global relations have mutually reinforcing material and symbolic dimensions with power struggles affecting either, resulting in variability for both. Nation-states are institutionalized loci of power upon which struggles concentrate. This approach recognizes the importance of global material relations emphasized by world-systems approaches and of symbolic structures central to global institutionalist approaches while underscoring persons’ positions and experiences confronting nation-states’ might.
Despite contestation and change, nation-states’ agents force upon the citizenship order structural and cultural features of caste systems, notably ascription-based social closure, ‘religion,’ and rituals limiting social interactions, to maintain caste privileges. Strict rules of citizenship inclusion and nation-states’ territorial nature create symbolic and territorial segregation leading to social closure, manifested in limited mobility between citizenship categories and in global division of labor. Nationalism establishes ‘ethnic’ distinctions between citizenship groups, each having its own idols and ways of honoring them. Visas, border phenomena, and naturalization involve rituals controlling high-caste interactions with persons from lower citizenship castes. While persons with high-caste citizenships can enjoy dignity, rights, and opportunities by virtue of their citizenship, persons with low-caste citizenships experience disadvantages at the bottom of the global citizenship caste order. The global citizenship caste order also produces especially disadvantaged groups including stateless persons, refugees, and migrants. The following sections discuss unequally distributed privileges in the citizenship order, identify nation-states and global elites as enforcers of the order, show how they apply symbolic and physical violence to monopolize cultural, economic, and social capital instituting structural and cultural features of a caste system, and highlight the experiences of oppressed categories of persons produced by the order.
Citizenship privileges and disadvantages
Castes involve monopolization of privileges (Jodhka, 2016, 2017; Weber, 1946). Through citizenship, nation-states distribute rights, benefits, opportunities, and risks unequally worldwide. As a cultural, economic, legal, and political institution, citizenship affects multiple aspects of persons’ lives. Each of these constitutes an axis of between-citizenship caste inequality. Through citizenship, nation-states concentrate economic resources and opportunities differentially (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009; Milanovic, 2010). Different political regimes (liberal, traditional, social democratic, etc.) represent different citizenship power arrangements with consequences for persons’ social and political opportunities (Janoski, 1998). Various indexes measure distinct levels of human rights and freedoms for citizens of different countries (e.g. Cole and Ramirez, 2013). Cultural practices turn cross-citizenship differences into hierarchical categorical distinctions (Brubaker, 2015). Racial hierarchies reflect colonial relations (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016). ‘Civilizational’ hierarchies within racial categories (e.g. ‘Europe’ vs. the ‘Balkans’ [Todorova, 1997]) fine-tune cross-citizenship cultural distinctions. Between-citizenship distinctions are enshrined in different legal entitlements (Shachar, 2009). Thus, the global citizenship order represents a multidimensional institutional complex of inequalities.
The global citizenship order is a caste order in which nation-states deploy physical and symbolic violence to monopolize cultural, economic, legal, and political privileges normalizing cross-national inequalities. Citizenship closure rules, citizenship-based segregation, nationalism, and visa, border, and naturalization rituals are mechanisms enforcing the order. Given their positions in the global citizenship caste order, persons have distinct expectations about what life holds for people with their citizenship status. For example, people have different expectations about how long they and their loved ones will live on average: well into their eighties in Europe but up to their lower fifties in Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2020). Disparities in infant mortality rates, healthcare provision, poverty, violence, wellbeing, opportunities, and state capacity are factors explaining different life expectancy rates among citizenship castes. Nation-states, discussed next, make persons believe their lives are worth less than other people’s lives because of their citizenship caste.
Nation-states and global elites as enforcers of the global citizenship order
Global stratification based on citizenship appears natural because of symbolic violence (Brubaker, 2015) initiated by nation-states via their ideology and practices of citizenship and nationalism. ‘Through the structuring it imposes on practices, the State institutes and inculcates common symbolic forms of thought, social frames of perception, understanding or memory, State forms of classification or, more precisely, practical schemes of perception, appreciation and action’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 175). Nation-states codify their take on citizenship into legal citizenship rights holding monopoly on their allocation. Similarly to property rights, citizenship rights allow privileged countries’ citizens to hoard benefits and mitigate risks bolstering global citizenship inequality (Shachar, 2009). Citizenship rights legitimate the unequal citizenship caste order forcing the oppressed to accept the schemas oppressing them (cf. Bourdieu, 2000). Nationalism is another aspect of symbolic violence helping maintain the global citizenship caste order. Nationalism serves as its ‘civil religion’ (Bellah, 1967) sanctifying each nation, naturalizing differences and masking inequalities between nation-states, and regulating ritualistic interactions between citizenship castes’ members.
Global elites, drawn from all citizenship castes, play the sacerdotal role of maintaining the citizenship caste order’s sanctity, similarly to how Christian elites upheld European feudalism. Known as the ‘transnational capitalist class,’ they include transnational corporate executives, bureaucrats and politicians, professionals, and consumerist elites (Sklair, 2001). Enjoying flexible cosmopolitan citizenship’s economic and social privileges (e.g. free movement) (Balta and Altan-Olcay, 2016; Ong, 1999), global elites institute nation-states’ policies and practices sustaining the global citizenship order.
Nation-states deploy force to uphold the citizenship caste order not only symbolically but also physically. Nation-states monopolize control over citizens’ and non-citizens’ movement (Torpey, 2000). They erect borders and mobilize military and other security forces to protect the citizenship order. Monopoly over freedom of movement sustains territorial segregation and limits interactions between citizenship castes keeping underprivileged castes away from privileged castes’ territories. Whether through symbolic or through physical means, nation-states absorb challenges to the global citizenship caste order, such as critiques of cross-national inequality and migration pressures.
The global citizenship caste order is the product of colonialism, imperialism, and their aftermath. Merging economic, physical, and symbolic force, powerful states constituting the world’s core have extracted resources from other regions and have consolidated their dominant positions (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; McMichael, 2016; Wallerstein et al., 2016). The global division of labor and the economic, cultural, and political inequalities brought about by these processes have been challenged and have evolved (McMichael, 2016; Wallerstein et al., 2016). Change demonstrates the global order is not immutable. The global citizenship order, however, remains unequal.
Within persons’ lifetime, change in the global citizenship caste order is barely perceptible. Persons tend to experience their positions in the global division of labor due to their citizenship status as unshakable caste distinctions. Nation-states may improve their economic standing, improving in the process their citizens’ positions in the global economic hierarchy (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009; McMichael, 2016). Persons may attempt to emigrate as an individual strategy of upward citizenship mobility (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009). They often find it difficult to overcome all discriminatory aspects of the citizenship caste order. South Koreans, for example, may enjoy an improved global standing because of their country’s economic miracle while continuing to experience racism. Wealthy persons with lower-caste birth citizenships buying their way into higher-caste legal citizenships (Boatcă, 2016) still face other state-imposed symbolic distinctions, such as ethnicization, gendering, language-based distinctions, and racialization (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; Schachter, 2016), co-constituting the global citizenship caste order. While contested and not immutable, global citizenship caste distinctions are sticky, relying on nation-states’ formidable cultural, economic, and political power, whose enforcement mechanisms I discuss next.
Citizenship and social closure
Citizenship closure rules
Nation-states institute a citizenship-based caste order through closure rules restricting mobility or intermarriage between castes via citizenship laws. Citizenship rules establish how persons are included in citizenship categories and what these categories entail. Persons are assigned citizenship through ascription, or birth lottery, through which citizenship entitlements are obtained at birth (Shachar, 2009). In most countries, citizenship is based on jus sanguinis, ‘right of blood,’ according to which children automatically acquire parents’ citizenship (Feere, 2010). As of 2010, in only 30 countries is citizenship based on jus soli, ‘right of soil,’ according to which children automatically acquire citizenship of the country on whose territory they are born (Feere, 2010). Both jus soli and jus sanguinis are legal mechanisms assuring citizenship’s ascriptive character.
Ascription-based rules limit mobility between citizenship castes. Boundary crossing through acquisition of non-birth legal citizenship, called naturalization, is not impossible but is rare, being strictly regulated and subject to an arduous purification process (see section on Naturalization rituals below). Acquiring new legal citizenships does not guarantee symbolic equality with ‘natural’ citizens (Schachter, 2016). Within-citizenship discrimination (based on race, religion, etc.) demonstrates global citizenship distinctions’ endurance. Even when holding legal high-status citizenships, persons perceived to originate from lower castes (ethnic, racial, religious minorities, etc.) often experience cultural, economic, and/or political disadvantage. Intermarriage between members of different citizenship castes is not necessarily forbidden although, historically, miscegenation laws abound. 4 Citizenship-based intermarriage is made difficult because of segregation, because of economic and legal conditions spouses have to meet to be together, and because of cultural distinctions continuously challenging it. Nation-states enforce citizenship closure rules through physical and through symbolic violence, which inhibits inter-citizenship mobility as one aspect of their efforts instituting a global citizenship caste system.
Citizenship-based segregation
Segregation is another tool nation-states deploy to effect social closure as part of a global citizenship-based caste system (cf. Weber, 1946). Citizenship castes are segregated both physically and occupationally. Citizenship-based physical segregation is due to nation-states’ territorial nature and to limitations on freedom of movement nation-states impose on people. Partially the result of territorial segregation and continuously enforced through cultural, economic, and political power (e.g. colonialism, postcolonial relations), occupational segregation manifests in global division of labor (McMichael, 2016).
The territorial segregation among citizenship castes is in part product of nation-states’ territorial nature. Nation-states claim sovereignty over territories and, by extension, over the people residing in these territories. Border enforcement mechanisms maintain nation-states’ territorial distinctiveness as citizenship-granting entities. Nation-states’ security apparatus also ensures laws and regulations are enforced within their territories. Nation-states exercise sovereignty by policing borders and populations on their territories.
Persons’ cross-border movement presents challenges to nation-states’ sovereignty claims and to the global citizenship caste order. Nation-states face this challenge by claiming monopoly on persons’ freedom of movement through passports and border controls (Torpey, 2000; Yuval-Davis, 1999). To preserve high-caste citizenship’s benefits, privileged citizenship castes limit access to their territories via this passport and border-control system. Passports (and other national IDs) link persons with particular citizenships. Within nation-states, access to such documents and to the citizenship rights of which these documents are tokens is unequal (Yuval-Davis, 1999). Across nation-states, border-crossing procedures determine which passport holders are entitled to pass through which border in what circumstances if at all.
Persons get some sense of their position in the global citizenship caste order through the freedom of movement across borders or lack thereof to which their passports entitle them. Passport possession does not automatically entitle its holder to free movement across any border. Passports are ranked according to the number of countries in which their holders can enter without additional procedures and/or finances (see sections on Visa rituals and Border rituals below) (Passport Index, 2020). Higher citizenship castes’ passports tend to be at the top of the passport ranking (e.g. European countries’ passports, many of which are former colonial powers). Lower citizenship castes’ passports are toward the bottom of the passport ranking (e.g. passports of the least developed countries, [former] colonies, and/or conflict-torn regions). Passports facilitate territorial segregation by allowing higher citizenship castes’ members to move freely 5 across borders while limiting lower citizenship castes’ members to nation-states’ territories to which they belong.
Persons belonging to low citizenship castes experience the most severe limitations on their freedom of movement. Their predicament is analogous to serfs bound to manors. Such segregated populations find themselves quarantined off indefinitely with few opportunities to thrive on territories of usually weaker states with limited resources. Persons entrapped in high-risk circumstances (e.g. poverty, limited economic opportunities, violence, short life expectancy) have few opportunities to escape such risks by moving freely across borders. Territorial segregation serves as another mechanism for instituting a global citizenship caste order exacerbating social closure created by its primarily ascriptive character.
Territorially segregated populations with limited economic opportunities are easily exploited. Lower citizenship castes often find themselves in predominantly low-pay occupations. The global citizenship order’s territorial segregation thus facilitates occupational segregation. This occupational segregation manifests in what world-systems theorists call global division of labor (McMichael, 2016).
Nationalism as citizenship’s civil religion
Justifying ideologies, according to which honorific caste distinctions take ethnic and religious forms, with purity rituals mediating interactions between castes, are other mechanisms enforcing caste orders (Weber, 1946). In the global citizenship caste system, nationalism serves as the civil ethno-religion justifying the order. Nationalism as a civil ethno-religious mechanism at nation-states’ disposal enforcing the global citizenship order as a caste order endows national distinctions with ethnic character. Citizenship castes venerate nation-states as the citizenship order’s idols in distinct ways. The principle of universal citizenship equality masks citizenship-based inequality. Visa, border, and naturalization rituals (see next section), especially stringent for low-caste persons, mediate interactions between citizenship castes.
Nationalism is not just an ideology justifying nation-states’ power but also a ‘civil religion’ (Bellah, 1967) grounding the nation-state order. The nation-state, with its omnipresence and omnipotence in persons’ lives, has become sacred. Citizens honor nation-states as idols, developing iconography and rituals (flags, heroes, monuments, holidays, etc.) and often sacrificing their lives for them. Nationalism simultaneously creates a cultural bond between nation-states and persons and imbues it with a sense of normality, universality, and moral righteousness.
Nationalism is a universalizing ideology, meaning it takes the order it supports as self-evident and universally applicable providing the global citizenship order’s unifying logic, similarly to how religions operate. Nationalism touts the nation-state as humankind’s natural governance unit despite its recent historical development. Thanks to nationalism, the nation-state has become a global institution with authority to regulate numerous aspects of persons’ lives (Meyer et al., 1997).
Nationalism is also a particularizing ideology creating cultural distinctions between citizenship categories (Brubaker, 2015). Through their authority, nation-states produce cultural uniformity within their territories (Anderson, 1983) crystallizing over time into national characters. Constant production and reproduction of national characters mold the ‘ethnic’ distinctions between citizenship castes defining the global citizenship caste order.
Justifying citizenship is an important aspect of nationalism and is paradoxical. On the one hand, through constitutions and laws, nation-states promulgate citizenship equality and frame it in universal terms. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a universal citizenship rights standard. On the other hand, upholding citizenship rights depends on individual nation-states interpreting universal standards differently, showing different commitment to upholding these standards, and having different capacities to uphold them even if they are committed to them. The result is de facto inequality among persons around the world based on their citizenship masked by the de jure principle of universal citizenship equality.
Nation-states have been remarkably successful in upholding the citizenship equality myth despite challenges by (gender, race, sex, etc.) minorities fighting existing inequalities among citizens within their borders (Somers and Roberts, 2008). This has been possible because of the symbolic violence exercised by citizenship elites leading nation-states. The high social closure levels among citizenship castes have contributed to the myth’s endurance globally.
Awareness of increased between-citizenship inequality (Bashi Treitler and Boatcă, 2016; Brubaker, 2015; Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009) challenges the citizenship equality myth. Global media flows, increased border crossings, and reckoning with migrant populations’ disadvantaged status perturb the global citizenship order’s territorial segregation and highlight between-citizenship inequalities. Nation-states have responded to this challenge by maintaining citizenship distinctions and by strengthening their commitment to rituals controlling interactions between citizenship castes, to which I turn next.
Rituals controlling interactions among citizenship castes
Visa rituals
Distinctions between high and low castes are maintained through stigmatizing rituals (Weber, 1946). For the global citizenship caste order, visa, border, and naturalization rituals are ‘purification’ rituals sanctioning inter-caste relations especially critical for low-caste individuals’ access to interactions with higher citizenship castes. Persons belonging to low citizenship castes are required to obtain visas before accessing high citizenship castes’ territories 6 (e.g. Schengen visas). Issuing visas to high citizenship castes’ territories is the ritual equivalent of absolving persons to an extent of their relative symbolic impurity. Ability to obtain visas attests to high-citizenship-caste individuals visitors’ acceptability for social intercourse. For persons belonging to low citizenship castes, visa requirements are indications of their inferior status. Visa processes are thus ritualistic mechanisms nation-states deploy maintaining symbolic and physical boundaries between citizenship castes.
Obtaining visas to enter high-caste nation-states commonly involves fee payments, vetting, sponsorship, and time commitment. For underprivileged persons, visa rituals’ fees and vetting requirements are often prohibitive. Fees must be paid to visa-issuing nation-states immediately regardless of the visa application outcome. Vetting involves providing guarantees that applicants are not likely migrants, for example demonstrating family ties and economic assets in the country of citizenship. Only persons with access to economic means belonging to low citizenship castes are usually able to overcome such hurdles to travel internationally. Other low-citizenship-caste members are deemed symbolically impure to enter high-caste nation-states and are expected to stay put. If individuals considered symbolically impure defy the cultural-legal citizenship system and cross borders undocumented, they become an undesirable underclass high citizenship castes’ ‘natural’ citizens consider unworthy of social intercourse (e.g. Schachter, 2016).
Legal residence in high-citizenship-caste territories usually requires sponsorship. 7 Legal residence sponsorship means individuals applying for legal residence become high-caste persons’ wards, in the case of family-sponsored visa applicants; schools’ wards, in the case of student visa applicants; and employers’ wards, in the case of work visa applicants. Applicants’ legal residency status depends on maintaining the terms of the dependency relationship with their sponsor. As symbolic purity guarantors, sponsors have power to exercise control over their wards’ lives, which is another indication of the latter’s inferior status.
Visa rituals are just a preparatory step for entering high-caste territories. Another type of ritual establishing purity boundaries between castes occurs in spaces referred to as ‘borders,’ discussed next.
Border rituals
Borders are the imaginary lines demarcating nation-states’ legally recognized territorial limits and points of entry controlling people’s flow across borders. Points of entry include physical infrastructure and personnel (notably security personnel) processing passengers’ arrivals and departures from or to other nation-states. Points of entry can be located by nation-states’ territorial limits or within their territories, for example at international airports.
Physical inspection of travelers’ bodies and belongings in the name of security is one purity ritual taking place at borders. Increasingly, all airline passengers, regardless of whether they travel domestically or internationally, are subject to such inspection. This practice reflects the challenge heightened freedom of movement presents to nation-states as institutions in charge of the global citizenship caste order. The level of scrutiny, however, varies between domestic and international travel. International travel is treated with more suspicion. Nation-states’ need to establish travelers’ symbolic purity through physical inspection is highest in cross-border movement, which presumably involves persons of different castes.
Airline and cross-border travelers 8 are required also to pass legal status inspections further demonstrating their symbolic purity. National/state IDs, passports, and visas represent the physical legal tokens of symbolic purity. Only those in possession of the right purity tokens can travel by air. International travel, in particular, requires passport possession, unless the nation-state to which the traveler belongs and the nation-state to which the traveler is going have established other agreements. As noted, not all passports are equal as regards the right to cross borders to which they entitle their holders. To enter high-caste territories, persons from low citizenship castes need visas. Persons’ ability or inability to cross borders with dignity and ease reflects their caste position. Symbolic worth in the hierarchy of citizenship purity is thus ritualized through legal status inspection.
Another common ritual for sorting persons according to caste rank at borders is the formation of different lines (e.g. for EU vs. non-EU passport holders at EU borders). Persons belonging to privileged citizenship castes form lines through which they pass relatively quickly only showing their passports. Persons belonging to less privileged citizenship castes often have to go through different lines involving additional processing, more time, and less certainty as to whether they can cross the border or not. Sorting persons into different lines at borders provides a spatial-visual manifestation of the symbolic inequality between citizenship castes as regards their ritual purity.
Wall erection along nation-states’ territorial limits (e.g. the US–Mexico border wall) is a ritual through which higher castes affirm lower castes’ symbolic impurity and commit to keeping the ‘impure’ (e.g. ‘criminals’ and ‘illegals,’ according to former US president Trump) away. At the same time, border walls are recognitions of privilege and of hoarding of citizenship caste privileges. As of 2019, over one-third of countries (about 70) have built border walls (Ordway, 2019). Crossing borders does not guarantee equal citizenship treatment, even in best-case scenarios of persons acquiring new legal citizenships through naturalization, discussed below.
Naturalization rituals
In rare instances, legal citizenship can be acquired later in life, through a ritualistic process called ‘naturalization.’ In 2018, the naturalization rate in the European Union, one of the most desired immigrant destinations, was 2.1% for resident foreigners (Eurostat, 2020). The very use of the term ‘naturalized’ in reference to citizens not holding citizenships based on birth suggests their status is not considered ‘natural.’ While these exceptions create an impression of openness of the citizenship order, they do little to undermine citizenship’s ascriptive foundation. Even if persons acquire a new legal citizenship status, they are likely to continue to be treated as outsiders by high-caste countries’ native citizens on symbolic grounds (based on ethnicity, language, race, etc.), more so if they are not white (Schachter, 2016). Persons are usually marked by their birth citizenship – and through it by their global citizenship-based caste position – for life.
Through their naturalization laws, nation-states make strategic decisions about the conditions under which persons may qualify for legal citizenship to which they are not entitled by birth. These conditions limit access to naturalized citizenship while quelling potential challenges to the unjust global citizenship order. Family ties (e.g. marriage, blood relation), merit (e.g. high achievements, professional training, military service), wealth, and, in rare cases, humanitarian considerations are key naturalization criteria privileged by nation-states (Bauböck and Goodman, 2010; Blizzard and Batalova, 2019; Boatcă, 2016). Additional eligibility criteria include a legal residency period (subject to vetting and sponsorship, as discussed above), cultural competences (e.g. language, civic knowledge), ties to the adoptive country (e.g. ancestry, cultural, economic, and political ties), and other legal and personal requirements demonstrating good character (e.g. no criminal record), good health, and overall worthiness of prospective citizens (Bauböck and Goodman, 2010; Blizzard and Batalova, 2019). Naturalization takes time, money, and skill (Bauböck and Goodman, 2010). Less privileged countries’ wealthy citizens can navigate naturalization and citizenship rules better (Balta and Altan-Olcay, 2016; Boatcă, 2016).
People still attempt the naturalization path because having a legal high-caste citizenship is an honor and a privilege, as many would say, and because they could pass it on to their children. Naturalization involves demonstrating the highest degree of ritualistic purity for non-citizens. Migrants entering the naturalization path must discipline themselves into becoming their new country’s model citizens while remaining in legal limbos constituting a second-class citizenship. The naturalization process, if possible at all, takes years of persons’ lives during which they accept limited freedoms, rights, and opportunities. Aspiring citizens must demonstrate symbolic purity through self-denial and through long-term commitment to the citizenship they aspire to attain.
The final ritual of obtaining non-birth citizenship through naturalization, following demonstration of worthiness, often involves taking an oath of allegiance to the new country (Bauböck and Goodman, 2010). This ritual is similar to feudal caste systems’ knighting ceremonies. Through ritualistic reception of the new citizenship status conferring to them new rights and privileges, persons move from one purity category to another legally (but not necessarily culturally). Naturalization rituals maintain social closure between citizenship castes by endowing the limited opportunities for legal mobility between citizenship categories with a ceremonial, almost sacred, character, denied to most, especially the most oppressed.
Oppressed categories of persons produced by the global citizenship caste order
The global citizenship caste order produces several oppressed categories of persons who challenge the order’s logic of coupling birth citizenship statuses with nation-states. One oppressed category includes stateless persons, persons who do not qualify for a birth citizenship and are thus excluded from the order. Two other oppressed groups, refugees and migrants, are persons from low citizenship castes who escape nation-state territories to which their birth citizenships assign them. These groups are analogous to the South Asian ‘untouchables’ regarding their disadvantage in the dominant social order. From nation-states’ points of view, these oppressed citizenship categories of persons are aberrations and are often treated as such. Nation-states’ treatment ranges between ignoring oppressed groups, occasionally providing them with charity, and/or keeping them at bay, physically (via border walls, encampments, and detention centers), culturally (via citizenship laws and practices), and economically (by curtailing their livelihood opportunities).
Stateless persons
Stateless persons, persons not entitled to citizenship, are oppressed by exclusion from the global citizenship order. Statelessness occurs when persons do not qualify for citizenship under either jus sanguinis or jus soli. This is the case when the country where children are born does not recognize jus soli and when neither parent is eligible to pass on their citizenship to children under jus sanguinis. Currently, there are 3.2 million stateless people (UNHCR, 2017). While given some protection under international law, stateless persons are noncitizens as regards the rights, freedoms, and opportunities to which they are entitled with regard to any nation-state. Exclusion from the global citizenship order highlights privileges the order distributes unequally.
Refugees
Refugees are another oppressed population under the global citizenship order. The international community partially recognizes this order’s injustices, adopting procedures allowing some persons to move across borders onto safer ground. Persons fleeing from violent conflicts and those fearing persecution may qualify for the legal ‘refugee’ status, which entitles them to some cross-border movement and some protection and support. Among the 67.75 million forcibly displaced people today tracked by the UNHCR (2017) (a number on the rise since the late 1990s [The Economist, 2016]), one-quarter have a refugee status while more than half are internally displaced. More than half of refugees are children. Fifty-five percent come from Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan.
Refugees’ plights are less than certain to improve after they embark on a cross-border move however. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR, 2017) paints refugees’ experience in somber tones as follows. The vast majority of refugees are hosted in neighboring countries, including Turkey (3.1 million), Pakistan (1.4 million), Lebanon (1 million), Iran (979,400), Uganda (940,800), and Ethiopia (791,600), none being a high-income country. Among highly developed countries, only Germany was particularly welcoming, albeit briefly. The agency further reports the majority live in urban areas but several million live in refugee camps, often for years and even lifetimes. Both refugee camp and urban dwellers endure substandard housing, poor sanitation, water shortages, and inadequate nutrition. Lacking access to communication technologies, many are disconnected from family and friends. Refugees’ access to decent livelihoods is limited too. Neglect and abuse are common, especially among children and women. School-age refugee children have limited access to education (50% attend primary school compared to more than 90% globally; 22% attend secondary school compared to 84% globally; and fewer than 1% pursue higher education compared to the global average of 34%). For the vast majority of refugees, a refugee status does little to improve their lives, other than removing them from the immediate heat of conflict.
Regarding refugees’ long-term prospects, fewer than 1% are resettled in third countries. Volunteer repatriation is an option once conflict subsides; many take it. The clearest path is to remain long-term in their host country and try to integrate, if given the chance. Over the past decade, however, only 1.1 million refugees have become their host country’s citizens (UNHCR, 2017). Most refugees remain second-class citizens of countries not at the top of the citizenship caste order.
Migrants
Migrants are a third oppressed group in the global citizenship caste order. Given how consequential for persons’ wellbeing between-country inequality is, migration is the most rational individual strategy for achieving upward social mobility (Korzeniewicz and Moran, 2009; Milanovic, 2010). Persons holding low-caste citizenships may make the difficult decision to leave everything and everyone they are familiar with behind in search of better futures. 9 High-income countries, especially those conferring high-caste citizenships (e.g. EU, US), are the most coveted destinations among migrants. Persons’ willingness to uproot themselves and often risk their lives to migrate to new countries indicates they consider the status differences between living in their country of origin and migrating to another country large enough to merit the sacrifice.
Potential migrants wanting to escape low-caste citizenships face three possible paths, none placing them on par with high-caste countries’ native citizens. The most advantageous but least accessible path is to seek legal residency possibly leading to a new legal citizenship in a higher-caste country. Access to this path is contingent on passing through stringent purification rituals, including obtaining visas, passing through official border entry points, and maybe qualifying for naturalization discussed above. Even in this best-case scenario, migrants are likely to endure second-class citizenship status in their destination country, culturally, economically, and/or politically. The second legally recognized path migrants can take is to become refugees. The eligibility criteria for a refugee status are also very stringent. As noted, a refugee status has numerous disadvantages. When persons need to migrate but do not qualify for a refugee status and cannot pass the purification rituals allowing them to interact with high citizenship castes legally residing on the territories of the latter, they may decide to become irregular migrants. Irregular migrants are the most stigmatized migrant group (Schachter, 2016).
Irregular migrants are an extremely vulnerable population relegated to an outcast status under the global citizenship order. Exposed to the risks of low-caste citizenships and denied freedom of movement, persons may attempt to escape the segregated territories to which their citizenships confine them. Irregular migrants are the global analog of feudal runaway serfs challenging the citizenship order’s unjust rules by crossing borders without undergoing purification rituals or by overstaying their visas. Because they do not conform to the citizenship order’s rules, irregular migrants are subject to detention and deportation. Under the permanent risk of detention and deportation, irregular migrants live as a runaway underclass outside citizenship protection.
Irregular migrants are often referred to as ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’ migrants. These terms’ use is consequential. ‘Illegal’ is a derogatory term used by irregular migration’s critics, comprising vocal segments of the public benefiting from the citizenship order. The term, however, is logical, accurately identifying the legal foundations of irregular migrants’ status in the current global citizenship order. 10 Cross-border movement not conforming to the global citizenship order’s legal mandates is criminalized (e.g. Snider, 2014). The term ‘undocumented,’ preferred by progressives, obscures the reality of criminalization (de jure or de facto) to which irregular migrants are subjected. 11
Irregular migrants experience numerous disadvantages. In addition to the fear of detention and deportation because of their legal status, living underground as an irregular migrant involves additional risks. Potential migrants entrust their lives and wellbeing to smugglers who do not always deliver on the promise to take them to safety. With the rising number of border walls erected since the fall of the Berlin Wall (from about 15 in 1990 to about 70 in 2019, or over one-third of countries having built walls) (Ordway, 2019), demand for irregular border crossings and the dangers associated with them have risen. Between 2014 and 2019, there were 33,686 recorded migrant fatalities (Migration Data Portal, 2020). Irregular migrant women regularly experience sexual violence (UNHCR, 2017). Poor working conditions, labor exploitation, and even slavery are common for irregular migrants too (UNHCR, 2017). In sum, insecurity, violence, and exploitation are common aspects of life for irregular migrants.
Why would persons take the irregular migration path despite the perils it involves? They must be escaping something worse. Persons’ willingness to abandon a citizenship in favor of living on the margins in another country is indicative of the hardships their birth citizenship’s low status entails. Persons who are segregated in restricted territories without the right to go elsewhere in search of better lives or who are pushed to live on the margins as an underclass of criminalized noncitizens are not free. They are trapped in what amounts to low-caste positions based on their birth citizenship.
Conclusion
A caste approach to citizenship offers a critical analysis elucidating mechanisms enforcing an unequal global order, emphasizing its injustice, and demanding solutions. I use analogies between the Indian caste order and the global citizenship order extrapolating from local experiences to the global scale. I show how nation-states deploy physical and symbolic violence to normalize cross-national inequalities via the citizenship institution. Mechanisms at nation-states’ disposal include citizenship closure rules, citizenship-based segregation, nationalism, and visa, border, and naturalization rituals combined with economic and military power. These mechanisms keep the vast majority of the world’s people segregated and branded with their disadvantaged birth citizenships for life allowing high citizenship castes to monopolize cultural, economic, legal, and political privileges. My approach draws from Bourdieusian sociology (especially Jodhka, 2016, 2017) conversing with world-systems analysis and with global institutionalism underscoring possibilities of contestation.
The global citizenship caste order is contested in different ways. Social movements demand global justice, oppose borders, and/or support migrants. Critical thinkers expose problems and propose solutions. One proposed legal solution is jus nexi, a connection principle envisioning citizenship based on a ‘real and effective link’ to a polity, as an alternative or as complementary to the ascriptive jus soli and jus sanguinis (Shachar, 2009: 165). A birthright privilege levy combined with jus nexi can redistribute opportunities and finance a global safety net providing essential goods such as food, safe water, shelter, education, and healthcare (Shachar, 2009). Mobilizing, migrating, and/or withholding compliance, underprivileged persons challenge nation-states to reckon with the global citizenship caste order they institute.
The global citizenship caste order is unjust, producing unequal access to dignity, wellbeing, and opportunities determining persons’ life chances from birth. Citizenships at the top of the hierarchy entail privilege whereas citizenships at the bottom afford little of it. Low citizenship castes are bound to residing and often dying prematurely in nation-states offering limited opportunities for dignified living and personal development, with limited freedoms and rights, and with scant chances of escaping their lot. Future research should further examine how the nation-state-instituted global citizenship caste order affects different aspects of persons’ lives and how people resist the logic of the order.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was possible thanks to a Junior Faculty Grant for Research and Creative Achievement from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi and thanks to the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Grant/Award Number: ANID/FONDAP/15130009.
