Citizenship unbound: The global politics of neo-liberalism and labor migration

This dissertation considers the status of citizenship in an era of neo-liberal globalization. Citing increased labor migration and the retreat of domestic social policies throughout the world as intersecting processes, I argue that narratives of national citizenship lie at the heart of this intersection, transformed by rapidly changing geopolitical conditions. Despite challenges, national citizenship remains a relevant political category, though reformulated along the lines of neo-liberal principles of privatization, market rationality, and individual responsibility. the politics and rhetoric surrounding the 1996 federal reforms of immigration and social policy in the United States serve as one example of this process. I further support my claim with an extensive illustration of the linkages between the restructuring of U.S. health care policy for senior citizens with the increased migration of women from the global South to provide low-wage direct care services for the aging population in the United States. I then evaluate the work of Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen and Thomas Pogge, arguing that their respective efforts fail to offer effective interventions into the fate of democratic citizenship in an era defined by expanding inequalities and shrinking public spaces. I conclude by bringing together the works of Karl Polanyi, David Held, and Hannah Arendt with feminist scholarship to develop a feminist theory of democracy and political membership for the twenty-first century. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)