Citizenship, agency, and the problem of sovereignty

This commentary asks what would change about the analyses in AE ’s “Citizenship, Solidarity, and Nonbelonging” forum if the state were not assumed as the background. Using research on unrecognized states and their citizens, the commentary urges a return to the problem of sovereignty that takes seriously the desires that sovereignty evokes. Doing so, it argues, can help us understand the shape that political belonging might take beyond the nation‐state.