Being a citizen of two countries, one Jordanian and one Western, and having lived extensively in both, I have long been aware that identity is rarely as settled as our official documents suggest. From an early age, questions of who I am, where I belong, and what that belonging entitles me to were never abstract, rather, they were shaped by my lived experience, memories of my own and others borrowed from family elders and friends, by my movement between places, and by an early awareness that citizenship, while legally precise, often fails to capture the fullness of how individuals understand themselves.

That personal awareness was further complicated by politics. Being of Palestinian origin meant growing up with the knowledge that identity is not only personal or cultural, but deeply political, and that for some, it remains permanently unresolved. I often say that I am a Jordanian but that I also carry the responsibility to an unresolved political claim in Palestine. Long before I had the language to describe it, I understood that citizenship, belonging, and security do not always align smoothly or naturally, and that attachment to a place can exist alongside uncertainty, exclusion, or historical rupture.

In recent years, as the Arab world continued to navigate transition and the global order showed increasing signs of fragmentation, these questions are ever more urgent. Public discourse across states and regions appears to be hardening into simplified “us versus them” narratives, even as the lived realities of individuals have grown more complex and arguably should have fostered greater understanding. But the reality is different: across many societies, a quiet stratification is taking shape, not only between nations, but more importantly - and worryingly in my opinion - within them.

On one side are individuals or citizens whose lives remain largely anchored to a single country of citizenship, where identity, belonging, and interests still broadly coincide. For those whose lives remain anchored to a single state, this shift has not been benign. Economic pressure, demographic change, and political uncertainty have unsettled long-standing expectations about stability, welfare, and representation. The sense that rules are changing without consent, and that others can enter and exit systems more easily, feeds understandable anxiety about fairness, loyalty, and social cohesion. These concerns are not simply reactionary; they reflect real stress on institutions that were designed for more bounded, predictable societies.

On the other are those whose lives have been shaped by war, economic necessity, migration, or global opportunity. Those individuals increasingly navigate multiple legal, cultural, and economic spaces. It is this latter condition, what some scholars have described as “flexible citizenship,” that has reshaped how ‘belonging’ is lived, judged, and contested.

This emerging divide is not merely about increased mobility or choice. While globalisation and technological advances have transformed travel, access to knowledge, and relationships, they do not fully explain what is taking place. It reflects deeper structural challenge in how states continue to govern without taking into account the realities on the ground. This misalignment becomes most visible in areas such as political representation, taxation, access to social protection, and the obligations placed on citizens who contribute economically or socially from outside territorial borders. While states continue to govern and mandate citizenship rules territorially, most individuals find that their lives are no longer contained within singular national frames. It is within this tension between rootedness and flexibility, between belonging and interest, that I feel and can see new forms of alienation, resentment, and political anxiety are taking hold.

At this point, it is worth pausing for a moment to reflect and absorb what we are considering. Much of the tension around citizenship today, I believe, stems from the fact that we are often speaking about different things using the same word. We use the word citizenship interchangeably with identity, belonging and residency based in self-interest or economic necessity. I believe that what is commonly referred to as an “identity crisis” is basically, in many cases, a misalignment between three distinct layers of how individuals relate to states and societies.

The first layer is citizenship, and this is the most formal and least ambiguous. It is a legal relationship between an individual and a state, defined by passports, residency status, and enforceable rights and obligations. Citizenship determines who can vote, who can access certain protections, and who is formally recognised as a member of a political community. It is precise, documented, and administered. But, and I think this is the critical point, it is also limited in what it can explain about how people actually live or feel.

The second layer is belonging. This is less visible, but often more powerful. Belonging is shaped by culture, language, religion, memory, social ties, and a sense of home. It is about where people feel recognised, where they feel safe, and where they believe they are understood. Belonging can exist with or without citizenship, and it does not always align neatly with legal status. Many people belong deeply to places where they are not citizens, just as others hold citizenship in states where they feel only partial attachment.

The third layer is interests, understood here as future orientation. This refers to where individuals believe they can build a viable life, where opportunities exist, where their skills are valued, where security feels possible, and where their children’s futures might unfold. Interests are shaped by economic conditions, political stability, personal aspiration, and global inequality. They are not necessarily rooted in sentiment or identity, but in pragmatic assessments of possibility.

What is increasingly evident is that these three layers, citizenship, belonging, and interests, no longer reliably converge in one place, in one territory, or in one state. For many individuals across the globe – and I think critically many individuals in the MENA region who either moved across to other regional countries or to the West because of wars, political closures or economic interests – borders have become less relevant to their reality.

Citizenship has become a product they can purchase or qualify for and their sense of belonging, and self-interest considerations have meant that these individuals are spread across borders. This does not mean that citizenship is experienced as transactional or optional in any meaningful human sense. For many, particularly those displaced by conflict, political closure, or economic collapse, access to alternative citizenship pathways is less a lifestyle choice than a strategy of survival. The commodification of citizenship, where it exists, reflects not moral decay but the absence of responsive legal frameworks that recognise how people are already living across borders.

It is this divergence, rather than identity itself, that lies at the heart of today’s unease, for individuals navigating layered lives, and for states still governed by assumptions of singular attachment. The challenge, then, is not whether individuals should be more loyal, more rooted, or more grateful, but whether states are willing to rethink political membership in ways that reflect contemporary patterns of contribution, attachment, and movement. Persisting with a singular, territorially bound model of citizenship risks deepening alienation on all sides.

As 2025 draws to a close and 2026 begins, these questions feel less theoretical and more immediate. The transitions we mark on the calendar mirror deeper transitions underway in how people relate to states, borders, and one another.

The responsibility now lies with states to reflect the complexity of individuals’ “flexible” status into innovative and rewarding legal relationships that go beyond a post-cold war version of state-citizen contract, rooted in territorially bounded, singular-attachment model of citizenship.