What does it mean to be political? Every age has based its answer on citizenship, bequeathing us such indelible images as that of the Greek citizen exercising his rights and obligations in the agora, the Roman citizen conducting himself in the forum, medieval citizens receiving their charter before the guildhall. Being Political disrupts these images by approaching citizenship as otherness, presenting a powerful critique of universalistic and orientalist interpretations of the origins of citizenship and a persuasive alternative history of the present struggles over citizenship.

Who were the strangers and outsiders of citizenship? What strategies and technologies were invented for constituting those forms of otherness? Focusing on these questions, rather than on the images conveyed by history's victors, Being Political offers a series of genealogies of citizenship as otherness. Engin F. Isin invokes the city as a "difference machine," recovering slaves, peasants, artisans, prostitutes, vagabonds, savages, flextimers, and squeegee men in the streets of the polis, civitas, metropolis, and cosmopolis. The result is a challenge to think in bolder terms about citizenship at a time when the nature of citizenship is an increasingly open question.

Engin’s research and teaching focus on doing international politics: the ways in which people constitute themselves as actors or subjects of international politics through performances, movements, and struggles. Engin holds a bachelor's degree from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) and graduate degrees from the Universities of Waterloo (MA) and Toronto (PhD). He developed an early interest in continental philosophy and was educated as an historical sociologist and political sociologist.

Engin is a chief editor of Citizenship Studies and is the editor of a book series Frontiers of the Political with Rowman & Littlefield International.

Engin is based in Mile End and University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP) establishing a research community across two institutions on doing international politics especially concerning migration, borders, and citizenship.

Engin was a professor of social science (1996-2002) and Canada Research Chair (2002-2006) at York University, and a professor of politics at The Open University (2007-2016) before joining QMUL in 2017.

http://enginfisin.net/publications.html

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/politics/staff/profiles/isinengin.html