5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Citizenship is not simply a status that determines political membership and access to rights, but one that is underpinned by various discursive practices anchored in everyday life. At the same time, these practices are determined by historically constituted power relations that shape belonging and political membership, while simultaneously creating and legitimizing social inequalities. The panel will explore these processes, focusing on the notion of decolonization, and its potential for disrupting and reimagining dominant paradigms of citizenship. Based on the discussion of associated different horizons of experience and potentially shared frameworks of subjectivity, it will consider how reference is made to nation-state orders, local contexts, or transnational networks. The aim is to develop a better understanding of negotiations and struggles for citizenship and the associated power relations, and to contextualize these within broader calls to decolonize understandings and practices of citizenship. Contributions can discuss a variety of questions: e.g., what forms and categories of citizenship play a role in negotiating belonging, and how are they mediated; the ways lived experiences and everyday practices unsettle, subvert, or contest dominant understandings of citizenship; the influence of current social transformations (e.g., climate change and environmental degradation, new technologies, social or political conflicts) on negotiations of citizenship and belonging. Exploring migrants acts of citizenship, struggles of Indigenous movements and other social groups can further lay a groundwork for reflecting on constructions of national belonging and how these struggles are connected to intersectional practices and categories like e.g., gender, religion, caste, Indigeneity, migration, or race.