“Lines in the Sand” – Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Future of Citizenship in the Post-Colonial Security State

The 2025 GLOBALCIT – Rainer Bauböck essay competition asked participants to answer the following question: “How will geopolitics affect future citizenship laws and policies?” This working paper presents the winning essay by Timothy Anderson and the three submission that received special recognition. Timothy Anderson identifies a “civilizational” framing of belonging in Estonia in relation to its large Russian-speaking minority and displaced Ukrainians and shows how citizenship practices from below try to cope and partially subvert such geopolitically driven categorisations. Fatima Zahid Ali examines the citizenship positions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the strategic production of statelessness in the geopolitical context of the war on terror. Christian Gormsen considers whether Russian passportisation policies in occupied Ukrainian territories signal new policies of singular and “re-dutified” citizenship, in contrast to the prevailing liberal trends of the past 50 years. Rohit Sarma is also concerned with the future of multiple citizenship and compares US policies of tacit toleration with India’s explicit rejection. He considers whether an erosion of international peace is bound to strengthen a norm of “undivided allegiance” that both countries share as a legacy of English common law.