Afterword: citizenship in pandemic times

Though focused on the pandemic, the authors of this special issue all dwell on a longstanding concern of the field of Citizenship Studies: how citizenship has so often fallen short of what it seems to promise, even as it continues to inspire people to make demands on states. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out what was in effect a blueprint for how states should treat their citizens, phrased in terms of political and civil rights, and then, and more controversially, in terms of social and economic rights, as well as cultural rights. Later treaties sought to stipulate how states should treat non-citizens in their territory, yet not all states have signed these, and even those that do have seldom made good on all their treaty obligations. International bodies including the UN are, meanwhile, deeply reluctant to prescribe when states are to admit people to citizenship in the first place, or to other statuses such as permanent residency.