Migration and citizenship pathways in/beyond Asia

Citizenship regimes are highly variegated in both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries. This special issue examines the diversified citizenship pathways that migrants undertake to manage uncertainties and global disparities or opportunities in various national contexts and at different life stages. We define citizenship pathways as the routes and processes that shape how migrants pursue personal and family goals to achieve citizenship recognition and redistribution. As migrants respond to changes in citizenship regimes or personal circumstances, their citizenship pathways evolve across national and transnational spaces, as well as over time. The special issue introduction sets out our conceptualization of citizenship pathways and provides an overview of how the papers in this collection engage with it. We foreground four themes: the geopolitical contexts of citizenship pathways; the strategies which migrants use to advance citizenship pathways; the temporal dimensions of citizenship pathways; and the new digital routes in citizenship pathways.