Transitional justice (TJ) combines transition towards democracy with a belief that a
reckoning with past human rights violations is necessary. Such a transition requires the transformation of political subjectivity and community. However, a detailed theoretical exploration of citizenship is largely missing from TJ scholarship; ‘citizen’ is often instrumentalised and idealised. Using examples of student protests and local community action for representation in Brčko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, this paper draws on relational theory to appreciate how citizenship is mediated and stratified through multiple factors. This contrasts demands made on citizens as member of ethnic groups by official reconciliation policies, with how social and political membership is negotiated in contested sites. A relational understanding of citizenship can help illuminate ‘the citizen’ as a bearer of identities more complex than those assumed and targeted by transitional justice reforms. This is helpful for critiquing apolitical and decontextualized approaches to political subjects at times of transition.
