Citizenship.
What comes to mind if I say that one word?
Does it evoke a cultural identity, speaking to who you are as a person?
Is it nothing more than a reason to skip the long border queue when you return from holiday,
or perhaps its potential to both improve or impair our lives only came into focus when Brexit created new barriers for both Britons and Europeans?
Whether you hold multiple citizenships, or just the one, care or don't really have an opinion,
chances are your life has been shaped in all sorts of ways by the passport you hold.
Welcome to LSEIQ.
I'm Jess Winterstein and this is the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question.
In this episode, I ask what does it really mean to be a citizen?
We're going to travel across continents and through time to take a look at citizenship in all its complexities,
uncovering how decisions made by a 19th century West African Gola ruler connected today's Liberian land ownership laws,
why British citizenship became racialized in the decades following the Second World War,
legislation that led to the Windrush scandal which devastated the lives of hundreds of Black Britons,
and how Bolivian migrants in the present day have struggled to create new lives in Chile.
But first, what exactly is citizenship?
So there's a contentious debate in both the scholarly as well as the policy literature about citizenship.
Legal scholars say citizenship is legal status, as you've mentioned.
Sociologists argue that its norms, its practices, its meanings, its identities.
Political scientists say that it's primarily political activity,