Title: Free Global Cities: A Tool to Overcome the Citizenship Apartheid

Author: Prof. Dr. Dimitry V. Kochenov

Abstract

Following the explanation of the racialized mechanics of the ‘standards of civilization’ underpinning the global passport apartheid, this chapter delves into the punishing role that citizenship is there to play for its victims. It thus prepares the ground for an informed charter cities discussion. Instead of addressing the dire consequences of the inequitable citizenship apartheid for the victims of citizenship in the global south, the idea of building separate cities for a minuscule selection of such people somewhere on the land of the under-developed spaces of no opportunity makes the situation worse, as it amplifies the citizenship apartheid. The idea underpinning such fee-paying reservations is a direct continuation of the purported ‘natural order of things’, which the global passport apartheid is there to instill and uphold. Instead of remedying the rightless situation of the racialized victims of citizenship, for whom the blood-based nationality status is a liability, the newly-proposed fee-paying reservations for the passport poor fully embrace the racist paradigm that those branded as non-civilized in the inter-bellum international law and whom the global passport apartheid is designed to bring down, should stay in their non-civilized spaces, no matter how more privileged the conditions in the special reservations over there, which their money could buy.

Keywords

Citizenship; Apartheid; Reservations; Human zoo; Segregation; Free Global Cities; Free Global City