Citizenship

A Peep into the diversity

A Peep into the diversity
How do we locate the syllabus within this
diverse traditions of thought?
• Foundation – EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

• Approach – LIBERAL TRADITION: T.H MARSHAL’S IDEAS ON

CITIZENSHIP; LIMITS OF LIBERAL CITIZENSHIP: FEMINISM &
MULTICULTURALISM

• Form: CITIZENSHIP AND CONSMOPOLITANISM

Why be a citizen with citizenship rights when you
are already a Human being with ‘Human rights’

• It was Locke who gave this idea of natural rights that every man should have free and equal
right ‘to Preserve his life, liberty and estate.’

• The American revolutionary adapted this formula to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; and
the French, to ‘liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.’ There was no doubt
among them that these rights were GOD GIVEN.

• But it is ultimately the function of the state to ensure their protection. (Social contract theory
is a classic example in this regard)

• So, we step from generalized natural rights, which individuals have qua human beings, to
specific civic rights, which are assured by the state to individuals qua citizens.
THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING ‘CITIZENSHIP’
• Despite citizenship’s intellectual currency there is often little agreement among the scholars as to precisely
how to understand the term. It has been championed by Liberals, Republicans, Radicals, Conservatives,
Communitarians, Ecologists all of whom have claimed that it is a fulfilment of their particular moral vision.
However, any concept that can mean so much to so many is bound to be highly enigmatic. Citizenship is
definitely one such concept.

• The concept has been flexible enough to take on new meanings, even some that appear sharply in tension
with earlier understandings such as Political citizenship, Economic citizenship, Social citizenship, Sexual
citizenship, Cultural citizenship, Multicultural citizenship, Ecological citizenship, Cosmopolitan citizenship
etc. As a result, in analytical terms our understandings of citizenship have remained highly fragmented if not
incoherent.

• All of it defies a simple, static definition that can be applied to all the societies at all the times
Citizenship as a CONTESTED CONCEPT
• Liberals value citizenship because the rights it bestows give space to the individual to pursue their
interests free from interference.

• In addition to rights, citizenship entails duties and obligations. Even a state like the USA, which is
often said to place too little significance upon responsibilities, has an oath of allegiance that
includes such duties as supporting the constitution, undertaking military service, and even to
'perform work of national importance when required by law’. Such line of thought is promoted by
the republicans which talk about active participation of citizens in the political life of the state

• Feminist analysis of the gendered nature of citizenship has helped draw our attention away from
questions concerned purely with rights and duties, towards the question of the nature of the
community in which citizenship is exercised.
 Citizenship as a contested concept
Since the late 1980s, thinkers on the left have also embraced citizenship as a potentially radical ideal.
There have always been socialists who have seen the democratic potential of citizenship. However, in
the past, the general attitude of those on the left was one of suspicion. Citizenship was seen as part of the
problem rather than a solution to the injustices of capitalism. Indeed, the rights of citizenship seemed to
be imbued with a capitalist logic. They helped legitimise private property and hid the inequalities of
class society behind an abstract rhetoric of equality. The failure of communism, the decline of class
organisation, and the realisation that in increasingly heterogeneous societies not all inequalities can be
reduced to questions of economics, have led many socialists to reconsider their rejection of citizenship.
Multiculturalists have also been relying and reconstructing the notion of citizenship to further their
ideals. According to this line of argument, dominant models of citizenship often reflects majoritarian
values and cultures undermining minority cultures. They therefore seek to promote an inclusive nature
of citizenship by incorporating minority rights and practices within citizenship conceptions.
Multiculturalists have also brought to the forefront the debate between individual and group rights
taking place in the context of citizenship.
It is INHERENTLY AMBIGUOUS

• There are some inherent tensions within the citizenship discourse, between- individual and the community,

rights and responsibilities, sovereignty and human rights, public sphere and private sphere, active citizens and

passive citizens, men as citizens and women as carers etc

It is a CONTINGENT CONCEPT
Citizenship does not emerge from a vacuum. It is very important to recognize that the status and practice of
citizenship emerged in specific places in response to specific struggles and conflicts. It is a contested and
contingent field that allowed for the mediation of conflict, redistribution of wealth and recognition of various
individual and group rights throughout history. The fact that it eventually became universal should be
interpreted not as 'natural' but rather as contingent and political. Similarly, its widespread use today cannot be
taken as a sign of its future durability or stability. Even in recent memory citizenship rights have been
suspended or radically altered by groups who have established their hegemony and imposed their view of the
world on other groups
It is a CONTINGENT CONCEPT
• It is very important to recognize that the status and practice of citizenship emerged in specific
places in response to specific struggles and conflicts. The fact that it eventually became universal
should be interpreted not as 'natural' but rather as contingent and political. Similarly, its
widespread use today cannot be taken as a sign of its future durability or stability. Even in recent
memory citizenship rights have been suspended or radically altered by groups who have
established their hegemony and imposed their view of the world on other groups
It is a CONTINGENT CONCEPT
 Modern Citizenship is practiced in the
context of nation-state
• From the eighteenth century onwards, citizenship has been bound closely to the institution of the nation-state and
therefore in practice has acted as 'a powerful instrument of social closure' (Brubaker 1992: 23). The extent of
citizenship, then, has been determined by boundaries between states, which are both physical and cultural in
form. Consequently, citizenship has been about exclusion from, as well as inclusion into the polity. Immigration
controls and residency requirements are seen by states as an important part of their sovereignty and represent the
material aspects of exclusion. Cultural exclusion has also played its part, in the form of the concept of the nation.
This means that individuals within state boundaries, legal residents, guest workers or refugees, as well as
foreigners outside state boundaries, can be perceived as 'outsiders' or second-class citizens by the dominant
culture of the polity.
Citizenship is a momentum concept
• John Hoffman

• Momentum concepts are those which are infinitely progressive and egalitarian: they have no stopping point and

cannot be ‘realized’. Static concepts, by way of contrast, are repressively hierarchical and divisive. The latter must be

discarded whereas the former have an historical dynamic which means they must be built upon and continuously

transcended. The state, patriarchy and violence are examples of static concepts; freedom, autonomy, individuality,

citizenship and emancipation are examples of momentum concepts

• In what way is citizenship a momentum concept? In three ways. First, the struggle for citizenship can be developed

even by those who seek only limited steps forward and are oblivious of a more wide-ranging agenda. Second,

citizenship involves a process of change that is both revolutionary and evolutionary – it is important that we do not

privilege one over the other – and third, citizenship is an on-going struggle with no stopping point. It is not that the

ends of an inclusive citizenship are not important: it is rather that achieving one, enables us to move to the next, ad

infinitum.
How do we understand citizenship
questions then?
• Judith Shklar was observed that “there is no notion more central in politics than citizenship, [yet]
none more variable in history nor contested in theory.

• There are common themes and common divides that have come to organize the citizenship
discourse in legal and political thought.

• Linda Bosniak writes that questions on citizenship can be broadly divided into three parts –

• Those that concern the substance of citizenship – what is citizenship?

• Those that concern its domain of action or location – Where does citizenship takes place?

• Those that concern the class citizenship’s subjects- Who are the citizens?
A broad understanding
• At a fairly broad level of generality, the term ‘citizenship’ possesses a common substantive core: most
commentators approach citizenship as a concept that designates some form of community membership, either
membership in a political community (political and constitutional theorists) or membership in a common
society (the sociologists). The commonly accepted definition of citizenship was given by T.H Marshal who
held that citizenship is a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All those who
posses this status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status endowed. However,
this answer to citizenship’s “what” question begs its own questions in turn, since the nature, character and
determinants of this membership, the content of citizenship rights and its relationship with duty and the
nature of equality, still remain to be specified.