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A variety of phenomena including mass migrations, diasporas, dual citizenship arrangements, neoliberal economic reforms and global social justice movements have since the 1970s produced shifting boundaries and meanings of citizenship within and beyond the Americas. This special issue builds upon, but also extends, prior discussions on transnational citizenship, by situating new practices of ‘immigrant’ and ‘emigrant’ citizenship and the policies that both facilitate and delimit them in a broader political–economic context and accounts for how new forms of neoliberal governance shape such practices. The essays included here draw from a range of disciplines and inter-disciplinary perspectives that focus on migration between the United States and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean which in recent years have been transformed into ‘emigrant states.’

This article takes its point of departure in an incident of communal violence in the rural Peruvian community of Urcumarca to discuss the transnational political engagements of a group of Andean migrants from this community based in Maryland and Washington DC. As inhabitants of rural Peru, only a few Urcumarquinos have historically exercised full citizenship in their country of origin prior to migration. It is argued that, while the particular incidence of economically supporting the legal process following the violent incident in Urcumarca may be taken as evidence of the development of ‘diasporic citizenship’ among US-based migrants, it is important to understand such political practices as a continuation of local struggles against economic and juridical marginalisation within Peru.