The Practice of Global Citizenship

Explores the global duties attached to human rights, including the necessity to promote political integration between states.

Luis Cabrera (Author)

9780521128100, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 October 2010

330 pages, 2 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.53 kg

'A challenging, innovative account of the responsibilities and practice of global citizenship. An excellent and important book for anyone interested in cosmopolitanism, immigration, global justice, or the institutional transformations that would yield vast improvements for so many who suffer needlessly under our current arrangements.' Gillian Brock, University of Auckland

In this novel account of global citizenship, Luis Cabrera argues that all individuals have a global duty to contribute directly to human rights protections and to promote rights-enhancing political integration between states. The Practice of Global Citizenship blends careful moral argument with compelling narratives from field research among unauthorized immigrants, activists seeking to protect their rights, and the 'Minuteman' activists striving to keep them out. Immigrant-rights activists, especially those conducting humanitarian patrols for border-crossers stranded in the brutal Arizona desert, are shown as embodying aspects of global citizenship. Unauthorized immigrants themselves are shown to be enacting a form of global 'civil' disobedience, claiming the economic rights central to the emerging global normative charter while challenging the restrictive membership regimes that are the norm in the current global system. Cabrera also examines the European Union, seeing it as a crucial laboratory for studying the challenges inherent in expanding citizen membership.

Introduction
Part I. Theoretical Concerns: 1. Global citizenship as individual cosmopolitanism
2. Rights, duties, and global institutions
3. Defining and distributing duties
Part II. Global Citizenship in Practice: 4. Minutemen and desert samaritans: citizenship practice in conflict
5. Mobile global citizens
6. Global citizen duties within less-affluent states
Part III. Advocacy and Institutions: 7. Regional citizenship and global citizenship
8. Advocacy duties and global democracy
9. Education and motivation for global citizenship
Conclusion: the practice of global citizenship.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Sociology [JHB], Philosophy [HP]