‘I’m Local and Foreign’: Belonging, the City and the Case for Denizenship

Those considering threats to the liberal-democratic model of citizenship which emanate ‘from below’ have naturally focused on migrants’ sentiments of belonging and the meaning they ascribe to citizenship – or substantive citizenship. Using the findings of two years’ ethnographic fieldwork, the article explores the modes of belonging of a group of first-, second- and third-generation migrants in central London. It is argued that a substantive notion of ‘denizenship’ united these individuals – whether they were citizens or denizens (resident non-citizens) in the formal sense – a mindset characterised by a rejection of nationhood and involving either a renouncement or a refusal of citizenship and its attendant duties and obligation