What happens to citizenship governance when states must decide whom they will protect during a crisis? This article highlights the highly variegated and context-specific nature of citizenship governance in times of crisis. It shows that in determining the entitlement to protection, mere differentiation between citizens and non-citizens does not fully apply. Rather, legal status is combined with individuals’ personal circumstances and the states’ international commitments. To illustrate this, we use empirical data on evacuation policies and travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic across 204 countries and territories worldwide. Our findings show how different configurations of citizenship governance emerge in times of crisis, making visible membership asymmetries that ordinarily remain implicit.

Jelena Džankić, Lorenzo Piccoli and Ashley Mantha-Hollands, Configurations of citizenship governance: membership asymmetries in times of crisis, Citizenship Studies, 2026.