The Cosmopolites

September 14, 2015
The role of citizenship and statehood in the average person’s life is often taken for granted. Abrahamian, opinions editor at Al Jazeera America, challenges such complacency in a sharp, insightful exposé of the world of the stateless. She contrasts those who hold multiple passports by virtue of economic privilege, as citizenship becomes a luxury good and a hedge against political instability, with people who have no citizenship, such as the Bidoon, who live in Gulf Arab states, notably Kuwait. Abrahamian demonstrates the intersection of these two groups by examining a peculiar concept—citizenship for sale—and how it may benefit both the ultrawealthy and the countries trying to figure out what to do with their stateless populations. For example, the Comoros, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, has offered to sell citizenship to Gulf Arab states to allow their Bidoon residents to emigrate abroad. Abrahamian draws from economic and political theory for a fascinating, eminently readable exploration of contemporary citizenship and concepts of statehood. Readers will be deeply intrigued by the connections she draws and the implications of the modern movement away from statehood and nationalism, and eager to learn more when this quick read is over.

September 15, 2015
Swiss-Canadian-Iranian journalist Abrahamian looks closely at modern internationality and the legal liminality that can accompany it. Well at home in the airports and diplomatic offices of the world, the author, an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America and editor at New Inquiry and Dissent, admits a "discomfort with the national 'we.' " Yet, she continues, national identity gives a person legal standing in the world: to be a cosmopolite is not quite the same as being cosmopolitan, and to be free of the encumbrances of nationalism can sometimes mean being without a nation. Pico Iyer covered the freedom part of the equation in his similarly wide-ranging book The Global Soul (2000). Where Abrahamian diverges is in her unblinking look at the phenomenon of statelessness. Depriving them of citizenship allowed the Nazi regime to persecute German Jews in the first place, denying them what Hannah Arendt considered the overarching advantage of citizenship: "the right to have rights." Arendt pressed for the right of stateless people to have legal standing internationally, a question that is of immediate concern given the growing number of refugees in the world. "Fixing statelessness isn't technically very difficult," writes Abrahamian. "It can be solved with some basic organization and paperwork." Yet doing so requires political will that most nations seem to lack, unless it comes in the form of citizenship for sale, a specialty of certain islands around the world; or the creation of multitiered citizenship schemes that allow natives of, say, the Gulf emirates to withhold certain privileges from new arrivals. Abrahamian's fluently told, fast-paced story takes her around the world, into dark corners such as the passport industry ("You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many passports") and refugee processing centers, and it ends on a dark note suggesting that anyone seeking a new country who doesn't arrive with a thick wallet is likely to be turned away-or worse. A slim but powerful book of great interest to students of international law and current events.

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October 15, 2015

Over 2,500 years ago the ancient Greeks developed the concept of kosmopolitēs or "citizen of the world." In her first book, Abrahamian (opinion editor, Al Jazeera America) examines the various iterations of this concept in the modern world. Her interest began through her experience of being raised in an international setting. She examines how citizenship is marketed to rich jet-setters, people making political statements and nations wanting to provide citizenship to other countries for their own "stateless minorities." This slim volume is an interesting overview of what has, since 2008, become a source of income for the countries involved in the trade. It is a fairly easy read with a number of endnotes and a list of titles for further reading. VERDICT This quick read about the new vision for the classic concept of world citizenship is recommended to readers interested in either modern global citizenship or niche economics and marketing used by some counties.--John Sandstrom, New Mexico State Univ. Lib., Las Cruces

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