Categorical boundaries: the political production of kinship and citizenship

ABSTRACT The article explores the multiple ways/layers in which “boundaries” shape contemporary life. To be a state is to have territory controlled by the state. A state that does not have formally recognized boundaries that are acknowledged by other states is a state in constant jeopardy. Modern states are committed to consolidating boundaries –even as boundaries are often fluid, dynamic, and changeable. Boundaries are foundational to categorical thinking. Categorical thinking is the assembling of items, events, situations, people, things into groups which are presumed to shave common characteristics in opposition to other groups. Categories are socially/culturally constructed. Their ascendency/institutionalization at particular points in time often leads to their naturalization over time, as if they are given in nature or have a seamless, continuous history. Modern states try to fix, stabilize, naturalize themselves as categories through boundaries. Citizenship is a form of categorical thinking, a form of boundary created, necessitated, by modern states. Citizenship determines who and how one gets to belong to a state; who the state claims; and who is entitled to claims on the state. Refugees are refugees because they lost the ability to live within the boundaries constructed by their state. Whether as a result of violence, forced migration, political persecution, or other means, they can no longer live within the territorial boundaries of the state of which they had been citizens or residents.