Membership, Migration, and Inclusion in the Civil Sphere

In this article, we explore the intersection of migration, membership, and inclusion through Civil Sphere Theory (CST), the most powerful theory currently available for explaining social solidarity in modern, differentiated societies. While CST has amply proven its worth by deepening our understanding of social solidarity and civil repair within established polities, it has insufficiently addressed the boundaries that define inclusion and exclusion in the context of migration. We open the article by reconceptualizing immigration as the crossing of geographical, political, and symbolic boundaries. This perspective shifts the focus from linear processes of inclusion to the dynamic interplay between national membership, citizenship, and the civil sphere. Drawing on CST’s nuanced approach to cultural and social boundaries, the paper makes explicit how in the contemporary world, national and civil memberships are tightly coupled. Concerning migration, the civil sphere must consequently mediate between the formal inclusivity of liberal-democratic ideals and the bounded character of national belonging. We further advance a critique of CST’s limited attention to citizenship, emphasizing how citizenship remains a key conduit for universalizing national membership. To conclude, we identify the engine of potential membership change in the tension between social and symbolic boundaries embedded in differentiated societies. This approach bridges migration studies and cultural sociology, providing some preliminary insights into the mechanisms involved in civil incorporation.