A radical theory of citizenship as modular, algorithmically governed rights rather than a fixed status of national membership.

Beyond Membership argues that twenty-first-century citizenship is no longer all-or-nothing. It can be pushed and pulledstretched and warpedby rights. Instead of treating membership as the source of rights, A. Aneesh flips the script. He starts with the enforceable rights people actually holdthe rights to enter, work, reside, claim welfare, or voteand shows how these bundles now determine how much citizenship one effectively possesses.

The book traces a long arc from kinship-based social reproduction to modern institutions and, ultimately, to the if-this-then-that logic that increasingly governs access to labor markets and social rights. Beneath that arc is a clash between two social orders. One is built around kinshipblood, soil, family, and belongingthe emotional force behind national citizenship. The other is built around functionroles, rules, competence, algorithmic designwhere kinship is recoded as nepotism and friendship as cronyism, and steadily discredited by organizational norms. As social reproduction shifts from family and lineage to institutions and rights regimes, citizenship becomes modular: a programmable bundle of rights rather than a fixed status of national membership.

Through detailed cases including Canadas skilled-worker ranking system, citizenship-by-investment programs that trade capital for passports, and ancestry-based statuses like the Overseas Citizenship of India, Aneesh shows how labor, capital, and ancestry are translated into scores and thresholds that decide who may work, settle, and benefit.