XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

240

Towards a Global Citizenship

RC12 Sociology of Law (host committee)

Language: English

According to Beck, cosmopolitanism is a “Global sense, a sense of boundarylessness. An everyday, historically alert, reflexive awareness of ambivalences in a milieu of blurring differentiations and cultural contradictions. It reveals not just the ‘anguish’ but also the possibility of shaping one’s life and social relations under conditions of cultural mixture. It is simultaneously a skeptical, disillusioned, self-critical outlook”    (Beck U.,  Cronin C.,  Cosmopolitan Vision, 2006).  In other words, a cosmopolitan way of life is the necessary consequence of a globalized world, where the Lebenswelt more ad more depends on immaterial and disembedded (Giddens, The consequences of modernity, 1991) processes. In such a context, more and more individuals are developing self-representations and life-styles characterizing by weak local ties and high rates of mobility, both geographical and professional. Also due of the growing flows of migrants and refugees, the need is strong for supranational norms (such as the case of European Union) that grant the opportunity for individual to move across different areas of the world, beyond national legislations. This entails deep changes in the notion of citizenship, whose traditions link with nation-states sounds more and more anachronistic.

This panel welcomes theoretical reflections, case studies or scenario analyses  on law-making processes related to the evolution of the norms on citizenship into a cosmopolitan and global direction.