Academic texts are often limited to elite citizens and exclude the marginalised. Restricted by linguistic complexity, institutional gatekeeping, and high financial barriers, these texts are often circulated within elite academic circles, reinforcing existing inequalities in knowledge production and consumption. As a result, the ability to participate in scholarly conversations, whether in the social sciences, humanities, or other sciences, is limited to those with access to universities, libraries, and subscription-based journals. The following interview, conducted over emails, is an endeavour to democratise access to academic research. Read the first such interview in this series here. Elizabeth Cohen and Cyril Ghosh’s research takes us to what and where people stand in the discourse of democracy.Cohen is the Maxwell Professor of United States Citizenship in the Department of Political Science at Boston University and an associate editor of the American Journal of Political Science. Cyril Ghosh is Associate Professor and Lloyd B. Politsch ’33 Chair of Law in the Department of Political Science at Clark University. Their book, Key Concepts in Political Theory: Citizenship, along with their chapter on ‘Citizenship’ in the Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory, attempts to fill an important gap in scholarship: the question of the role, or rather, the place that people occupy within the larger democratic framework.They endeavour to unpack the role of identity in this fractured world. At a time when there is an increasing attack on who belongs where, their work helps us understand what it means to be a citizen and what that meaning implies for us. When the Chief Justice of India, seated on the bench, casually passes the state’s rhetoric of the “intruder” in a PIL concerning Rohingya refugees, it reveals where hope remains amid what one would call “state barbarism.” Globally, this barbarism continues to evolve and compels us to ask: do we, as a people, matter at all? Therefore, Cohen and Ghosh’s scholarship offers us an opportunity to understand these key issues which take us to the core of our identity, place, and role in the modern state. Cyril Ghosh and (right) Elizabeth Cohen.The following are edited excerpts from our conversation.As you know, there is a growing global discourse on the question of citizenship, with many countries grappling with who is considered a citizen and who is not. This issue seems to transcend borders, especially in democracies. In your chapter, you argue that “the process of distinguishing citizens from non-citizens begins with the founding of a nation-state and continues throughout its existence.” Given this, could you elaborate on why you view the discourse on citizenship as a continuous, evolving process, rather than a settled or fixed concept?Thank you, too, Rajesh, for extending an invitation to us to do this interview!Yes, it is indeed the case that the process of distinguishing citizens from non-citizens is an evolving one. A state may, and frequently does, change its policies to either include previously excluded categories of persons as citizens or exclude from citizenship those who were previously deemed eligible for citizenship. Given the nature of this interview, we can’t go into a lot of granular detail, but we think it might be helpful if we cite a few concrete examples to explain why we say this. First, consider the case of the United States, which has historically denied citizenship status to Black Americans, Indigenous persons, and other non-white members of its society. However, over time, it has changed its policies to remove formal and many informal restrictions based on race and gender. Similarly, Germany, until the end of the 20th century, only offered citizenship to those who were ethnically German (as in, German by blood). But, since the turn of the century, it has changed its policies to grant birthright citizenship to those who are born on German soil.In recent years, India has extended citizenship eligibility to specific categories of people that the Indian state recognizes as persecuted religious minorities, such as, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and who satisfy certain other criteria, such as, among other things, having entered India on or before December 31, 2014.On the other hand, we also see some states adopting campaigns to exclude and even excise entire populations of people long-settled within their borders, including some with legal citizenship. Such is the case with Lithuania, where, citing “national security concerns,” there are ongoing efforts to revoke the citizenship of those who are supporters of foreign states, including but not limited to Russia. This possibility has emerged in the United States as well, where there is an ongoing movement to overturn interpretations of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that have long guaranteed citizenship to US-born children of undocumented immigrants. So, yes, the process of distinguishing citizens from non-citizens does indeed continue throughout a state’s existence. Citizenship rights are not static guarantees. What, in your view, defines citizenship? While much of the discourse often centres on the legal and political dimensions of citizenship, do you think we tend to overlook its practice and the ongoing process of citizenry formation? My own research discusses how people actively use the constitution to claim and assert their citizenship in everyday life. How do you see the relationship between formal and legal definitions of citizenship and the lived experiences of citizens? Do you think this dynamic shifts the way we understand the concept of citizenship in contemporary societies? You bring up a very complex issue here. In our book, Key Concepts in Political Theory: Citizenship (Polity, 2019), as well as in our chapter on ‘Citizenship,’ in the Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2025), we try to make it clear that the term “citizenship” does not lend itself to any clear or noncontroversial definitions. There is also a longstanding scholarly debate on this particular question of citizenly participation that you bring up.At the risk of oversimplifying a very complex and contentious set of questions, we can say that there are two major ways of thinking about citizenship. One focuses on the bundle of rights that invariably accompanies the status of citizenship across liberal democracies. The exact set of rights that populate this bundle varies by state. But it is always the case that a bundle of rights attaches itself to each instantiation of citizenship. The other major way of thinking about citizenship focuses on the practice of citizenly virtues and behaviour, and includes things like democratic deliberation, civic engagement, and political participation. The things you highlight in your work, such as the songs of the Bheels, the constitutional literacy being incubated by activists like Jaya Srikurni, Vidya Chouhan, Sampat Desai, and others, are examples of the latter way of thinking about citizenship.These latter accounts of citizenship privilege normative prescriptions. So, for example, in the constitutional literacy initiatives you describe, a fundamental normative ideal is that these acts are voluntary and consensual. A democratic state does not, and cannot, mandate that the citizens act in this way.We agree with you that this way of thinking about citizenship is more expansive than a state-based account and indeed has the potential to de-centre the role of the legal and political dimensions of citizenship. But we also see some difficulties with thinking about citizenship exclusively in these terms.One such difficulty is that no amount of such citizenly behaviour can bestow upon an individual the status of a citizen. So, if you are a foreigner who is living in India and who is deeply immersed in constitutional literacy initiatives, teaching and socialising minoritised communities into the language and symbolism of all that the Indian Constitution stands for, you nevertheless remain just that – a foreigner. Your citizenly acts do not make you a citizen.In our work, therefore, we adopt a realist, rather than a normative, perspective to engage with the concept of citizenship, even though we acknowledge that citizenly actions can be a constitutive element of the lived experience of citizenship in certain contexts.It leads me to the view of citizenship from the lens of state. You argue, “Some theorists have pushed back against the idea of state-centric views of citizenship. In so doing, they have argued, both as a historical and as an empirical matter, that nation-states do not have the exclusive prerogative to bestow citizenship rights”. Who do you think has the authority to determine who is a citizen and who is not? Is it purely a state function, or does this process also involve other actors, such as individuals, communities, or even transnational forces? Particularly in India, there is a huge discourse going on currently that the Election Commission cannot decide the test of citizenship in the name of revision of electoral rolls.Yes, this quote is from our chapter in the Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2025). What we intend to convey is that, in recent decades, several scholars have emphasised the fact that state-centric notions of citizenship are frequently under-inclusive. They disagree that the bestowal of the rights associated with citizenship inevitably occurs via the nation-state. Thus, some of these scholars demonstrate that trans- or supranational institutions and subnational institutions often bestow rights that might be, in other jurisdictions, called or associated with, citizenship rights. Then there are scholars who draw attention to international human rights norms, cosmopolitanism, and post-national conceptions of citizenship. And others cite regional citizenship, the rights of indigenous peoples, dual nationalities, and so on.The state, therefore, does not have the exclusive prerogative over bestowing citizenship rights. Critics might say that, while all this may be true, in the case of rights violations, there are very few institutions that one can appeal to in order to seek a remedy. On this view, those citizenship rights that are underwritten by the state are the only really meaningful rights of citizenship because they have the highest level of protection (even if, depending on the jurisdiction, this is more so in theory than in practice).With regard to the Indian case and the current controversy surrounding the Election Commission of India’s recent efforts to conduct a nationwide revision of electoral rolls under an initiative called the Special Intensive Revision, the professed reason for these efforts is to ensure that all eligible voters are included, and all ineligible voters are removed from the list. Opposition parties and activists have decried the move as, among other things, politically motivated, intended to disenfranchise Muslim and other minority voters, and an underhanded citizenship survey. A number of legal challenges to the SIR are ongoing at the moment. Meanwhile, The Hindustan Times has recently reported that the Supreme Court of India has clarified that the ECI has not claimed the right to declare anyone a citizen or non-citizen. Instead, it has cited its constitutional powers to “conduct an inquiry into doubtful inclusions in voter rolls.” It remains to be seen if the court will decide that the SIR is indeed an attempt by the ECI to arrogate the authority to determine citizenship status. In our estimation, however, there is no ambiguity about where the authority to determine Indian citizenship eligibility lies. It lies with the Indian Constitution and the various related statutes passed by the Indian parliament, and not with the ECI. But please note that this also means that the legal recognition of Indian citizenship remains with the state, even if the ECI is not the locus of this authority. On the other hand, as we have been saying, citizenship is an expansive concept, and its legal recognition is only part of the story. Its practice goes well beyond the reach of the state, as you yourself have documented.In your chapter, you discuss how liberal democracies often fail to clearly define the boundaries between members and non-members, creating a category of “semi-citizens” who hold some, but not all, of the core rights guaranteed by the state’s legal framework. How do you think this concept of semi-citizenship challenges the traditional understanding of full citizenship? To what extent is this ‘incomplete’ form of citizenship a structural feature of modern democracies, rather than an exception? In the context of migration – especially in countries like India, where migration has been a long-standing tradition – how accurate is it to continue viewing citizenship through the traditional lenses of residency and bloodline? Could these frameworks be limiting in understanding the dynamic and fluid nature of citizenship in contemporary societies?The idea of semi-citizenship challenges conventional views of citizenship as a single, stable legal status that reliably guarantees a full set of rights. In practice, citizenship in democratic states operates less as a clear divide between citizens and non-citizens and more as a spectrum, with rights distributed unevenly across different groups. Many individuals are formally included within the political community, but they also lack access to key political, social, or legal protections. For example, no jurisdiction allows minor citizens to vote. Many jurisdictions deny convicted felons a set of rights; many deny gays and lesbian citizens the right to marry; and so on and so forth. Citizenship is, therefore, not an all-or-nothing condition but, instead, a loosely bundled status made up of separable strands. And, rather than being an anomaly, semi-citizenship is, in fact, better understood as a routine feature of liberal democratic governance. States regularly rely on differentiated forms of inclusion to manage labour markets, welfare systems, and migration while maintaining symbolic boundaries of national membership. These arrangements allow for economic and social participation without full political incorporation, which, in turn, suggests that partial citizenship functions as a durable governing strategy rather than a temporary departure from democratic ideals.The dynamics of migration make these patterns especially visible. In societies where mobility has long been central to economic and social life, citizenship frameworks based on permanent residence or ancestry do not correspond to how people actually live and move. In India, for example, large-scale internal migration across state lines has produced populations who are legally citizens yet face uneven access to political representation and local public services depending on where they reside. Such cases highlight how models premised on stable populations and fixed attachments can obscure the realities of circular, regional, and long-term mobility. Acknowledging the structural persistence of semi-citizenship may help clarify these realities.How should we define citizenship in today’s fragmented world? Given the challenges we face, what are the ways to rethink citizenship from the perspective of fraternity – one that emphasises equality and egalitarian principles – rather than merely viewing it as a state-imposed, normative structure? How can we build a notion of citizenship that fosters solidarity and inclusivity beyond the traditional legal and political frameworks?Ironically, one of the most realistic responses to the question of how to foster solidarity and inclusivity asks us to return deliberately to formal understandings of citizenship and to insist on the recognition and enforcement of rights. Formal citizenship obligates the state to recognise membership publicly and to enforce rights in ways that are predictable and non-arbitrary. When laws and institutions are accountable to members of a society, they engender trust that pays dividends. By contrast, when states normalise disparate access to rights, they often, as a consequence, also weaken solidarity among the people who have been placed in these unequal relationships. Reasserting formal citizenship can counter this by demanding that inclusion take the form of enforceable legal commitments rather than informal or provisional recognition.A return to institutional guarantees also reveals opportunities to revive what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas refers to as “constitutional patriotism” – a form of political attachment grounded in shared commitment to constitutional principles, democratic procedures, and the rule of law, rather than to common ethnicity, culture, or national origin. By grounding solidarity in shared commitment to constitutional principles and the rule of law, rather than in ethnicity, culture, or origin, formal citizenship can support a form of political belonging that is inclusive. In this sense, insisting on recognition and enforcement does not close off broader forms of solidarity, but provides a legal and constitutional foundation upon which they can develop.Rajesh Ranjan is a Chevening scholar, lawyer, and researcher based in London, and can be reached at rajeshranjannluj@gmail.com.