This course will be offered by Heuss Visiting Professor Manuela Boatca. For a long time, within the Western tradition of the social sciences, citizenship was viewed as a modern, progressive institution that helped overcome the particularities of unequal social origins. In this seminar, this (predominantly male) academic tradition is contrasted with approaches that consider the emergence of the institution of citizenship in the West in the context of the legal (and physical) exclusion of non-European, non-white, and non-Western population groups from civil, political, social, and cultural rights, and views these exclusions—and thus citizenship itself—as historically gendered. Forms of racialization, sexualization, and precarization associated with the acquisition of citizenship and the associated gain in social mobility today are illustrated using examples of practices that subvert citizenship rights through marriage or birth, and extreme consequences such as statelessness on the one hand and the commodification of citizenship on the other are linked to these. Introductory readings: Cooper, Frederick (2018). Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference: Historical perspectives. Princeton University Press. Shachar, Ayelet & Bauböck, R. & Bloemraad, I. & Vink, M. (eds.) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship. Oxford University Press. Boatcă, Manuela, and Julia Roth. "Unequal and gendered: Notes on the coloniality of citizenship." Current Sociology 64.2 (2016): 191-212. Kochenov, Dimitry & Surak, Kristin (eds.) (2023). Citizenship and Residence Sales: Rethinking the Boundaries of Belonging. Cambridge University Press.