Introduction

In many contexts of the global South, ideas and practices around citizenship extend beyond the liberal notion of citizenship as primarily about the vertical relations between individual citizens and rights-recognising states. For marginalised communities, citizenship is often not experienced primarily in relation to the state, but instead through highly localised processes of horizontal identification and mobilisation. Collective and horizontal forms of ‘citizenship’ practices often emerge in reaction to unresponsive states which are unable or unwilling to provide key services such as health, water and housing. Basic services are often provided not by states, but by non-state actors such as transnational donor agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or humanitarian and relief agencies. In addition, non-state institutions such as chiefly courts, religious movements, social movements and local associations continue to form an important part of the social and political landscape and may become alternatives to the absent state. As a consequence, citizenship is often an inherently ‘messy’ practice that may involve participation in, and resistance to, a wide range of political institutions and societal spaces. In the daily scramble for livelihoods and security, ordinary people tend to adopt diverse strategies and draw on multiple political identities, discourses and social relationships to navigate daily life. In the context of unresponsive or absent states, citizenship practices, then, are often more about ‘the right to have rights’ and the right to participate in new and multiple public spaces than they are about struggles to access individual rights.