Global Society: Cosmopolitanism and Global Citizenship

A large variety of global developments have instigated intensified research and thinking on global citizenship in the past decades: economic globalisation and its social and environmental side effects; the rise of transnational civil society organisations; the emergence of transnational political and social spaces in the wake of spreading communication technologies and changing patterns of migration; the emergence of supranational spaces such as the European Union; the intensification of international cooperation in intergovernmental bodies and public–private partnerships; and last, but certainly not least, the problems associated with the globalisation of business companies whether in terms of human resource management of increasingly diverse workforces and production chains or in terms of global corporate responsibilities. The different social science disciplines have addressed the possibilities and conditions of global citizenship in various ways without, however, reaching clear conclusions on the trajectories of citizenship, its institutionalisation and its practices, and even its real capacity to solve any of the problems mentioned above, and consequently its desirability.