ARTICLE Citizenship and inequality in a global age A. Aneesh | D.J. Wolover University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee Correspondence Aneesh Aneesh, University of Wisconsin‐ Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA. Email: aneesh@uwm.edu Abstract Although the notion of national citizenship has long held the prom- ise of equal membership, it has proved less useful in a world of cir- culating cultures, people, and loyalties through money, media, and migration. The increasing mobility of capital and people across national borders compels us to conceptualize welfare and inequality at the global level. Although the enforcement of citizen rights remains within the purview of the nation‐state, the source of these rights can no longer be firmly placed within the national framework. From cosmopolitan imaginations to postnational research, contem- porary configurations of citizenship trace their legitimacy to global discourses that increasingly challenge the national order of citizen- ship. Yet current transformations in citizenship also point to the possibility of new inequalities, particularly, when nation‐states are increasingly able to modulate the rights they make available to immigrants, and differentiate among refugees, professionals, and investors among many other categories of people. 1 | INTRODUCTION In his pivotal essay, Citizenship and Social Class, T. H. Marshall (1950) restricted his analysis of citizenship and inequal- ity to the national level. Indeed, during the 20th century, citizenship came to be understood mostly in terms of national citizenship, and justifiably so. National citizenship promised unprecedented inclusion and equality. The rise of the national welfare state assured that the fruits of growth would come to all citizens irrespective of their class and status (Gøsta, 1990; Hicks, 1999; Skocpol, 1995). Accomplishments of the national welfare state over the years have included, inter alia, universal access to public education, health, and social security in many advanced economies. In recent decades, however, national citizenship is encountering challenges in view of accelerated flows of people and capital across borders (Frieden, 1991; Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2013), weakened national tax regimes (Piketty, 2014), and rising dual and multiple citizenships (Aneesh, 2016; Bloemraad, 2004; Dahlin & Hironaka, 2008). In this article, we examine the structural limitations of national citizenship in addressing the problems of welfare and inequality in a global age. To provide a survey of the rich literature emerging on links between inequality and citizenship, we begin with a brief discussion of citizenship inequality within the nation‐state, moving then to conceptions of global inequality based on one's citizenship status. We thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of Sociology Compass for their patient feedback on the earlier version of this paper. Received: 17 July 2016 Revised: 15 February 2017 Accepted: 21 February 2017 DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12477 Sociology Compass. 2017;11:e12477. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12477 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4 1 of 9