12 Noncitizenism relevant, they are in a continuum with (but not quite reaching) citizenship. These are not noncitizen statuses, though such individuals may well also be experiencing activated noncitizenship. Some individuals experiencing noncitizenship in a State may in fact also be formal citizens of that State. Still other noncitizens may lack any such recognised citizen or quasi-citizen relationship. Noncitizenship is also essential to liberal political thought and reality. Engin Isin writes: ‘[c]itizenship and otherness are then really not two different conditions, but two aspects of the ontological condition that makes politics possible.’8 For Isin, it is necessary to revisit the meaning of contemporary citizenship. He sees citizenship and otherness as ‘conditions of politics’. The approach here is similar, but differs in an important way. It advocates nonciti zenship as an analytic category in its own right within liberal theory and politics. That is, noncitizenship and citizenship are both essential to the creation of the State, and represent two modes of relating to it. This does not interfere with Isin’s notions of citizenship that go beyond State and other formal institutions. Yet, with regard to the State, some persons might relate overridingly as citizens or as noncitizens, while for others the relationship will be more mixed. This book develops the concept of liberal unhyphenated noncitizenship. It argues that this noncitizenship needs to be acknowledged and begins to examine its implications, including in terms of the resultant State-noncitizen obligations. Now I turn to what this book is not First, this book does not argue directly for a change in law. Instead, it advocates a refocusing of theoretical and political discourse. It seeks to develop a revised understanding of existing individual-State relationships and of the resulting obligations. The principal aim is to change the terms of debate – and for a theoretical, cultural and political recognition of noncitizenship and the obligations to which it gives rise.9 In fact, most of the obligations attributed to States in relation to noncitizens in the following chapters already exist under Human Rights frameworks. Legally, States already have these duties. They remain unfulfilled for cultural and political, amongst other, reasons. As such, it is principally this theoretical, cultural and political assumption that is addressed here rather than starting with law or policy. Twentieth-century liberal thinking arose partly as one alternative to fascisms and exclusionary narratives.10 The proposal here is to continue in this tradition, but to be aware of, and to challenge, liberalism’s 8 Engin Isin (2002) Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship, University of Minnesota Press, at p. x. 9 Innocent Asouzu argues that ‘the ultimate aim of any authentic philosophising subject subsists […] in changing ideas such that through the possession of new and better ideas, human beings can affect changes in the world through their actions.’ Innocent I. Asouzu (2004) The Method and Principles of Contemporary Reflection in and Beyond African Philosophy, University of Press, p. 6. 10 Jonathan Glover (2012) Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century, 2nd Edition, Yale University Press.