The concept of citizenship is a polysemic political concept, with multiple declinations and approaches (Isin and Turner, 2002). Traditionally, it has been understood in general terms as a conceptual interface that regulates the membership and inclusion of individuals in a given political community, which would recognise them certain rights and obligations. Today, citizenship is also understood as the outcome of a social struggle through which individuals and social groups engage in processes of claiming, expanding or losing these rights and obligations (Bassel and Isin, 2022). Such social processes are highly dependent on the historical contexts and territories. However, political theory has developed over time theoretical models that summarise certain approaches to citizenship, such as liberal, republican or cosmopolitan citizenships. In recent years, the literature has also raised the need to speak of a neoliberal citizenship, reflecting the impact of neoliberal hegemony in many Western states (Jöppke, 2021; Fourcade, 2021; Krippner, 2017; Mavelli, 2022).
To elaborate all these models, Political Theory has traditionally started from the ideas of great authors, often representing particular ideologies or traditions. Nevertheless, new advances in Ideology Studies have shown that ideologies are influenced as well by other multiple actors, reflecting the impact of social, cultural and technological transformations (Freeden, 2021).
This paper seeks to examine the impact on the shaping of a neoliberal model of citizenship of the notion of personal brand, a popular discourse that has gained popularity in recent years in the world of business and work, especially after the advent of social media platforms (Alonso and Fernández Rodríguez, 2024; Zamora García, 2024). This paper will use Spain as a case study and the period 2012 – 2022 as a time frame, taking advantage of the importance of the austerity policies that took place there in the post-2008 years, as well as the change in political orientation that has occurred in recent years as a result of the coalition government. In this way, we will analyse how the discourse of personal branding interacts with a dispositif of elements that configures neoliberal citizenship in a post-2008 moment, as well as the transformations within this dispositif in the recent years.
