This project follows from two experiences. The first one is academic, and I should perhaps not admit that it is the minor force behind the project. When I completed my PhD on obligation and war, I was dissatisfied with how the political obligation literature I had been reading did not seem to take identity particularly seriously. Identity was always present in some form, but usually only in a very vague and general sense in references to membership or citizenship. It appeared that the different life experiences that accompany different identities do not matter for the problem of political obligation, which seemed odd to me. A theorist of political obligation would at this point stop me and point out that the problem of political obligation is not supposed to address such issues, that it is concerned with why citizens accept the obligation to obey the law, and that it addresses a category of life in which identity only matters in a general sense. Citizens are expected to obey the law regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, religions, sexual orientation or class.

Nevertheless, residents, citizens or otherwise, experience the law differently, and considering that there could not even be a theory, let alone a problem, of political obligation without people being recognized as having and feeling that they have specific political obligations because of who they are, dismissing the complexity of identity is not something to be done with an analytical sleight of hand. More problematically, what concerned me as a multidisciplinary type of person most of all was how obligations that are political are different for particular identity-groups, and how political theory could help address this question with regard to the lived experiences of an identity-group. I started to think about political obligation as if obligations could be considerably different for women, for minorities, and for diaspora populations. In addition, I also questioned what made the obligations political. At this point it became clear that I was no longer thinking about political obligation in the traditional sense in which the term is used. Providing a theory that was appropriate became a driving force behind this book and, academically speaking, in the process this book ends up addressing and contributing to literatures in political theory, diaspora studies, transnationalism, international political sociology, Jewish Studies, and possibly Israel Studies as well.