Climate cosmopolitanism: broadening and deepening citizenship in response to the climate crisis

Citizenship can be understood as a legal status of membership in a polity or as a practice oriented towards the common good of political communities. This paper examines how the climate crisis impacts both dimensions of citizenship and how it ought to change in response to this crisis. Since World War Two, the boundaries of citizenship as a legal status of membership in a sovereign state have been broadened through states’ responses to international migration, while citizenship as a practice has become shallower. This paper argues that, although the climate crisis will feed into migration flows within and across states, these are unlikely to generate or require structural changes of citizenship status that have not already emerged in response to migration. The exception is the case of Pacific Island states that risk losing their territory, which calls for a novel form of dual citizenship. When considering citizenship practices, the global nature of the climate crisis calls for a global deliberative demos, which can be institutionalized through citizens’ assemblies and other democratic innovations that give new depth to citizenship practices. The crucial political battles over effective climate protection unfold, however, in national arenas where cosmopolitan conceptions of political community clash with communitarian ones mobilized by nationalist populists. The paper argues that cosmopolitans should aim to convince democratic majorities that climate protection is not only a global, but also a national common good. Overall, the climate crisis requires both a further broadening of national citizenship boundaries and a deepening of citizenship practices.