Citizenship as Mobility Capital

While both de facto and de jure inequalities in global mobility have been well documented, the interplay between law, global mobility, and socioeconomic inequalities remains underconceptualised. Building on Kaufmann’s notion of motility as mobility capital, this article develops the concept of transnational mobility capital to capture an individual’s legally mediated capacity for cross-border movement and residence. Despite widespread influence in mobilities research, mobility capital has not been systematically theorised in legal scholarship. To demonstrate the concept in a legal context, the article conceptualises citizenship as a key distributor of mobility capital and a legal platform that enables the conversion of economic, social, or cultural capital into enhanced capacities for movement. The article complements existing research on de jure and de facto mobility inequalities by showing that law not only governs access to global mobility but also structures the conditions under which different forms of capital can translate into increased capacities for movement. Ultimately, the article proposes transnational mobility capital as a promising analytical framework to better measure and analyse the often invisible role of law in producing and reproducing sociospatial stratifications at the global scale.