Chapter One

1. The Nature of Citizenship

1.1. Conceptualizing Citizen and Citizenship
Citizens are at the heart of a functioning democracy; they give life and meaning to the principles,
processes and institutions. For democracy to develop and endure, citizens need to exercise their rights
and responsibilities. Without the involvement of citizens in political life, government power can be
abused and the basic rights and freedoms of democracy can go unrealized. Because, a successful
democracy requires informed participation, citizens must first understand ideas about citizenship,
politics and government. They need knowledge to make decisions about policy preferences and the
proper use of authority, along with the skills to voice their concerns and to hold government officials
accountable. And then, they need to want to exercise their rights, and have the political space to do so
without unreasonable resistance or harassment from authorities or others.
Citizenship can be described as both a set of practices (cultural, symbolic and economic) and bundle of
rights and duties (civil, political and social) that define an individual's membership in a polity. In its
simplest meaning, ‘citizenship’ is used to refer to the status of being a citizen – that is, to being a
member of a particular political community or state. Citizenship in this sense brings with it certain
rights and responsibilities that are defined in law, such as the right to vote, the responsibility to pay tax
and so on. It is sometimes referred to as nationality. Citizenship, therefore, represents a relationship
between the individual and the state, in which the two are bound together by reciprocal rights and
obligations.
Citizenship refers to the legal status of an individual member to be a citizen of the state. In other
words, citizenship is the official recognition of an individual’s integration in to the political system. It
is the link between an individual and state. Legally, it is the contractual agreement between the state
and an individual live in that state. Citizen refers to an individual who has the right to be full member
of certain state, while the actual legal status memberships to state are called citizenship. It is the state
of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. It is the rule
and regulation applied on the concept of the citizen. It also deals with mode of identification of the
national found in the defined territory and serve as identifying the nationality. Generally, the concept
of citizenship varies from society to society, depending on the place, the historical moment and
political organization. Although differences may exist, there are common elements such as rights,
duties, belonging, identity and participation one can find in definitions of the term.

1
1. Citizenship as a Status of Rights: The mere fact of being a citizen makes the person a creditor of a
series of rights. In this sense, current political discourse often tends to identify citizenship with
rights.
 Liberty Right: is a freedom given for the right-holder to do something and there are no
obligations on other parties to do or not to do anything to aid the bearer to enjoy such rights.
 Claim Rights: are the inverse of liberty rights since it entails responsibility upon another person
or body. The duty bearer has to accomplish something that is indispensable for right holders to
enjoy the claim rights. That is, there must be somebody who is there to do or refrain from doing
something to/for the claim holder, i.e., claim rights are rights enjoyed by individuals when others
discharge their obligations. Hence, in contrast to liberty rights, claim rights impose a
corresponding duty on others to help respect and protect the bearers.
 Powers Rights: are rights regarding the modification of first-order rights. They are cooperative
controls that are imposed on others. The holder of a power, be it a government or a citizen, can
change or cancel other people and his/her own entitlements. For example, Article 40(1) of the
FDRE constitution asserts that Ethiopian citizens have the rights to the ownership of private
property and to modify, sale, donate or transfer their property to a third party. As it is stated in
Article 33(3) the FDRE constitution, every Ethiopian citizen has the right to renounce his/her
Ethiopian citizenship/nationality which shows the power rights of the citizens.
 Immunity Rights: allow bearers escape from controls and thus they are the opposite of power
rights. Immunity rights entail the absence of a power in other party to alter the right-holder’s
normative situation in some way. For instance, civil servants have a right not to be dismissed
from their job after a new government comes to power. Immunities also comprise compensation
for rights violations that occurred in the past and at least partially make up for past injustices or
uneven burdens.
2. Membership and Identity: Citizenship is associated with membership of a political community,
which implies integration into that community with a specific identity that is common to all
members who belongs to it. The criteria for membership have been linked to shared territory,
common culture, ethnic characteristics, history, etc.
3. Participation: Participation occupies a key position in citizenship. Nonetheless, individuals differ in
what approaches they find important – some people focus on their private affairs while others
actively participate in the life of the society, including politics. There are two approaches in this
regard; minimalists and maximalists. A minimalist approach to citizenship characterized by a kind of

2
 basic passive compliance with the rules of a particular community/State, while the maximalist
approach imply active, broad participation of citizens engagement in the State.
4. Inclusion and Exclusion: All individuals living in a particular state do not necessary mean that all
are citizens. For instance, there are non-citizens visiting, working and living in Ethiopia branded as
foreigners/aliens. Foreigners have the likelihood of staying in the territorial administration of
Ethiopia as far as they have authorized visas.
There are multiple identities of citizenship. Because of the deepening of the concept of citizenship,
current ideas about citizenship encroach more and more upon the identity of people. Citizenship is a
legal status held under the authority of a state, a social process by means of which individuals and
groups undertake to follow their interests by shaping obligations and rights. It is a particular set of
political practices involving specific rights and obligations with respect to a political community.
The three types of citizenship education have a differing emphasis in their goals and are connected
with differing pedagogical and didactical practices. Methodically, the adaptive type emphasizes the
transfer of values and the regulation of behavior; the individualizing type independent learning and
developing critical thinking, and the critical democratic type cooperative learning and developing
critical thinking through inquiry and dialogue. In the other words, types of citizenship education can be
identified as personally responsible citizen, a participating citizen and a citizen who strives for social
justice. These studies show that developing citizenship is not a linear process from passive to active,
but that citizenship can have different meanings and socio-political orientations. In general, the idea of
citizenship is said to have been different from the concept of today. Because historically it was the
product of the endless struggle of humanity for the realization of their rights to which they are endowed
with by their creator.
Why of teaching citizenship?
The principal justification for citizenship education derives from the nature of democracy.
Democracies need active, informed and responsible citizens – citizens who are willing and able to take
responsibility for themselves and their communities and contribute to the political process. These
capacities do not develop unaided. They have to be learned. While a certain amount of citizenship may
be picked up through ordinary experience in the home or at work, it can never in itself be sufficient to
equip citizens for the sort of active role required of them in today’s complex and diverse society. If
citizens are to become genuinely involved in public life and affairs, a more explicit approach to
citizenship education is required – this approach should be:
 Inclusive – an entitlement for all young people regardless of their ability or background
 pervasive – not limited to schools, but an integral part of all education for young people
3
  Lifelong – continuing throughout life.
What is the aim of citizenship education?
Wherever it occurs, citizenship education has the same basic aims and purposes. It is education for
citizenship – that is, education which aims to help people learn how to become active, informed and
responsible citizens. More specifically, it aims to prepare them for life as citizens of a democracy.
Different characteristics are required by citizens in different types of political system. The
characteristics required of people living as free and equal citizens in a democratic society differ
significantly from those of people living under, say, a totalitarian regime. Democracies depend upon
citizens who, among other things, are:
 aware of their rights and responsibilities as citizens
 informed about the social and political world
 concerned about the welfare of others
 articulate in their opinions and arguments
 capable of having an influence on the world
 active in their communities
 Responsible in how they act as citizens.
What are its essential elements?
Citizenship education involves a wide range of different elements of learning, including:
I. knowledge and understanding – e.g. about topics such as laws and rules, the democratic process, the
media, human rights, diversity, money and the economy, sustainable development and world as a
global community; and about concepts, such as democracy, justice, equality, freedom, authority and
the rule of law
II. Skills and aptitudes – e.g. critical thinking, analysing information, expressing opinions, taking part in
discussions and debates, negotiating, conflict resolution and participating in community action
III. Values and dispositions – e.g. respect for justice, democracy and the rule of law, openness, tolerance,
courage to defend a point of view, and a willingness to listen to, work with and stand up for others.
Citizenship education IS NOT:
 optional for students, teachers or schools
 about the indoctrination of young people
 about teachers following a particular political agenda
 to be confused with personal, social and health education (PSHE) or the
 National Healthy Schools initiative

4
  to be subsumed into other parts of or a ‘bolt-on’ to the curriculum
 just about feelings, values, school ethos or circle time
 just about volunteering, charity work and doing ‘good deeds’
 Solely about what goes on in schools.
Citizenship education IS:
 an entitlement for all young people
 relevant to the everyday concerns and experiences of young people
 about helping young people to think for themselves
 progressive and developmental
 active, enjoyable and stimulating
 rigorous and challenging
 a real curriculum subject with a clear aim and a distinctive core which includes
 a defined knowledge and understanding component
 co-ordinated and taught by skilled teachers who have specialist knowledge and
 the necessary skills, approaches and confidence
 about contributing to raising school standards and student achievement
 an essential part of the school curriculum, which links the curriculum, school
 culture and the wider community
 of benefit to young people, teachers, schools and their wider communities
 about contributing to creating more effective partnerships between schools and
 Their wider communities a lifelong learning process.
Category of right in Citizenship
In a comprehensive approach to citizenship, four rights can be identified.
1. Legal or civil rights: are mainly procedural rights (Rawls, 1982; Raz, 1984; Blackburn, 1993). In
this sense, legal (and political) rights that create law are foundational and underlie other citizenship
rights. Social rights of public assistance and medical care are not legal rights, but legal rights to
access the court system may be necessary in protecting these social rights.
 Legal rights include personal security rights that protect citizens against illegal
imprisonment, torture and death. They are also protections against invasions of privacy and
aids for controlling one’s body such as abortion rights.
 Legal rights include important procedural and access rights of legal representation: the
ability to confront witnesses, the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers, and the waiver of

5
 legal fees when citizens cannot pay for court costs. In a less procedural vein, legal rights
also include rights to freedom of conscience (e.g. rights to free speech at the personal level,
freedom of the press, free expression of religion) and choice (e.g. unencumbered selection
of one’s occupation or profession, free choice of ethnic or multiracial identities, and
freedoms of sexual expression including marriage).
2. Political rights: refer to participation in the public arena and are also largely procedural because the
process of enacting legislation is not synonymous with the substance of any particular right.
Legislation may also deal with many laws that have no direct effect on citizenship. Political rights
include citizens’ rights to vote and participate in the political process. They also involve the
procedures for electing political representatives, creating new laws, and running for and holding
political office. Political rights for organizations may include legal ways of raising campaign funds,
consulting with legislators on proposals, nominating political candidates, and lobbying for
particular policies. Finally, political rights include oppositional rights, minority protections, protest
and demonstration rights, free access to government information (e.g. Freedom of Information Act
in the USA), and the ability to conduct political inquiries.
3. Social rights and participation: rights are not the direct subject of this chapter, but to complete our
foundational purposes, we briefly include them. Social rights support citizens’ claims to social
status and economic subsistence. Social rights are largely individual and consist of four parts.
Enabling rights consist of health care, old age pensions, rehabilitation and family or individual
counseling. Opportunity rights consist of the various forms of education from pre-primary programs
to postgraduate university education.
4. Redistributive and compensatory: rights involve payments for rights deprivations and they can
include war injury benefits, work injury benefits, programs for the disadvantaged, unemployment
compensation, and other programs involving rights violations.
Aspects/Dimensions of Citizenship
Citizenship can be described as both a set of practices (cultural, symbolic and economic) and bundle of
rights and duties (civil, political and social) that define an individual's membership in a polity. It is
important to recognize both aspects of citizenship-as practice and as status--while also recognizing that
without the latter modem individuals cannot hold civil, political and social rights. In the same vein,
many rights often first arise as practices and then become embodied in law as status. Citizenship is
therefore neither a purely sociological concept nor purely a legal concept but a relationship between the
two. While, then, citizenship can be defined as a legal and political status, from a sociological point of

6
 view it can be defined as competent membership in a polity, thus emphasizing the constitutive aspect of
citizenship.
But those who do not possess the civil, political and social rights to exercise such citizenship would be
denied to become such a competent and full-fledged member of the polity in the first place. Thus, the
sociological and politico-legal definitions of citizenship are not mutually exclusive but constitutive.
However, objective citizenship does not in itself ensure the existence of subjective citizenship, because
members of groups that feel alienated from their state, perhaps because of social disadvantage or racial
discrimination, or any other factor, cannot properly be thought of as ‘full citizens’, even though they
may enjoy a range of formal entitlement. But before explaining this potential discrepancy, it is
important to continue with a general conceptual revision of citizenship. T. H. Marshall (1950) defined
citizenship as ‘full membership of a community’. According to him, citizenship is constituted by three
elements: civil, political and social (which are resumed in the following scheme).
Citizenship Elements Definition Institutions more Closely
associated
Civil rights Rights necessary for individual freedom –liberty of Courts of justice
the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith,
the right to own property and to conclude valid
contracts, and the right to justice.
Political rights Right to participate in the exercise of political Councils of local
power, as a member of a body invested with Government.
political authority or as an elector of the members
of such a body. Parliament and so forth.
Social rights The right to a modicum of economic welfare and Educational system
security And social services.
The modern and liberal notion of citizenship has three components.
1. First, it entails that the state protects and promotes and sometimes establishes a set of civil and
political rights (property rights, equality before the law, freedom of speech, the right to vote,
etc.). Every citizen is subject to the same laws and rules and holders of the same rights. While
the economic sphere is upheld through the protection of private property, other parts of ‘civil
society’ are protected from the state through institutionalization of civil and political rights
(freedom of expression, freedom of organization, the right to vote etc.). This dimension of
citizenship is formal and abstract, in the sense that it defines citizenship as ‘constituted by
common rights and obligations, whatever their content, not by particular rights or obligations’.
7
 Such equality before the law means that all citizens are recognized as equal, at least ‘in
principle’.
2. The concept of citizenship points to the participation of the population in the institutions of the
state. Universal citizenship means that everyone can participate in political institutions and
influence decisions made by those institutions. And if citizenship is to be substantial rather than
merely formal, formal rights must be transferred into actual popular influence. In practice, of
course, popular influence over political decision making presupposes some forms of mediation
between the community on the one hand and the institutions of government on the other. The
right to vote is supposed to guarantee that popular demands are channeled to the council, by
ensuring that those elected as representatives have the backing of their constituents. This type of
influence is only exercised periodically, through elections. But during their periods in office,
elected representatives are expected to act ‘on behalf of’ the people, and to mediate between
state institutions and the local community.
3. Dimension of citizenship is related to the conception of citizens as a community, who
constitute a ‘we’ and is represented by a state which is ‘theirs’: ‘A nation - state is a nation’s
state, a state of and for a particular, bounded, sovereign nation legitimate state power is seen as
based on popular sovereignty; the community of citizens governs itself through the medium of
the state. The nation constitutes a ‘we’, on whose behalf the state can claim to act, and full
citizenship presupposes that the inhabitants of a state constitute a ‘nation’. By including all
individuals and local communities in the national community, the state can claim to represent
the whole, conceived as not only as a collection of individuals, but as a collective unit.
Internally, this community is universal and inclusive. At the same time, citizenship is also a
form of ‘social closure’, since ‘foreigners’ - those who are citizens of other states - are excluded
from this community. The demarcation of citizens from non-citizens therefore closes the
community of citizens externally.
Some scholars look citizenship from three dimensions which include status, exercise and
conscience. Citizenship status is the set of rights and obligations between individuals and the
state. Only those individuals and groups which fulfil all the requirements that define citizenship
in a country will have the formal recognition of the state. Citizenship exercise refers to the
conditions necessary for the realization of citizenship rights and the incorporation of new rights
(the transformation of needs into legitimate rights), redefining and expanding the previous
notion of citizenship. Last, but not least, citizenship conscience makes reference to the

8
 conviction of being a citizen, with the recognition of the state expressed in concrete practices
that assure citizenship exercise.
The Foundation of Rights: Political Citizenship
Citizenship is grounded in the guarantee of legal and political protections from raw coercive power
whether that power comes in the form of the sword blade or gun barrel of soldiers, the fists of an
abusing spouse or parent, or an employer’s shout of ‘you’re fired’ that leads to a loss of work, income,
status and possibly nourishment. These protections involve ‘the many’ obtaining control of the
legitimate means of violence, the state, in order to enforce protections or rights against élites who wield
public and private power. Equally important, citizenship involves protecting ‘the few’ who have little
power (e.g. minorities of race, class, gender, and religious affiliations) who need shelter from the
tyranny of the ‘the many’ and/or élites. These rights and protections also involve obligations or duties
to interact within and promote the commonweal and political system in as much as they are needed. At
a foundational level, all citizenship rights are legal and political because citizenship rights are legislated
by governmental decision-making bodies, promulgated by executive orders, or enacted and later
enforced by legal decisions. And what these legal and political bodies primarily make is ‘law’. Thus,
legal and political rights undergird many other citizenship rights.
Citizenship may be defined as passive and active membership of individuals in a nation-state with
universalistic rights and obligations at a specified level of equality. Therefore, there are four main
points of this definition based on political foundation of citizenship.
1. First, citizenship begins with determining membership in a nation-state, which means establishing
‘personhood’ or who out of the totality of denizens, natives, and subjects of a territory are
recognized as being citizens with specific rights. Personhood began with a restricted group of élite
citizens and then developed to encompass more people. Noncitizens within a state (e.g. stigmatized
ethnic, racial, gender, class, or disabled groups) have slowly gained rights and achieved
membership. External membership concerns how aliens obtain entry and then become accepted or
naturalized as citizens.
2. Second, citizenship involves active capacities to influence politics and passive rights of existence
under a legal system. With passive rights alone, a beneficent dictator could rule with limited legal
rights and extensive social rights in a redistributive system. Active rights bring citizens in a
democracy to the foreground in politics and even the economy. When citizens become active in
citizenship rights, social scientists will be concerned with measuring the levels, causes, and
consequences of their participation.

9
3. Third, citizenship rights are universalistic rights enacted into law and implemented for all citizens,
and not informal, unenacted or special rights. Private organizations or groups can advance claims or
proposals for citizenship rights, but claims often derive from norms within subcultures and are
enforced by social pressures or group rules, and they often conflict with norms in other subcultures.
The process of enacting citizenship rights is an attempt to make these rights as complementary as
possible.
4. Fourth, citizenship is a statement of equality, with rights and obligations being balanced within
certain limits. The equality is not complete, but it most often entails an increase in subordinate
rights vis-à-vis social élites. This equality is mainly procedural – the ability to enter the public
courts, legislatures and bureaucracies – but it may also include guaranteed payments and services
that have a direct impact upon substantive equality. The extent of rights actually used by citizens
may also vary considerably with class and status group power.
Based on political foundation of citizenship, its rights and obligations exist at three levels.
A. At the Societal level, they refer to the development of citizenship rights and obligations in
countries, and the focus is on the existence, breadth, and extent of rights and obligations.
B. At the Organizational level, they concern the rights and obligations of groups to form and act in
public arenas.
C. At the micro-level, the individual definition of citizenship focuses on how each person sees the
relationship of rights and obligations within a framework of balance or exchange. It traces the
development of the ‘self’ in relation to various political groups and the state as a critical part of
citizenship, especially the development of social movement or community-oriented attitudes
and behaviours.
Why political citizenship?
Citizenship has traditionally referred to a particular set of political practices involving specific public
rights and duties with respect to a given political community. Broadening its meaning to encompass
human relations generally detracts from the importance of the distinctively political tasks citizens
perform to shape and sustain the collective life of the community. Without doubt, the commonest and
most crucial of these tasks is involvement in the democratic process – primarily by voting, but also by
speaking out, campaigning in various ways, and standing for office. Whether citizens participate or not,
the fact that they can do so colours how they regard their other responsibilities, such as abiding by those
democratically passed laws they disagree with, paying taxes, doing military service, and so on. It also
provides the most effective mechanism for them to promote their collective interests and encourage
their political rulers to pursue the public’s good rather than their own. Political citizenship permits
10
voting, appeals to representative government, and guarantees of physical security in return for ceding
the right to violence to the state. Its founding assumption is that personal freedom is both the wellspring
of good government and the authority of that government over individuals. In Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s paradox, this involves ‘making men free by making them subject’. As developed through
capitalism, slavery, colonialism, and liberalism, political citizenship has expanded its reach and
definition exponentially since the eighteenth century, though it remains unevenly spread across the
globe.
The Foundation of Social Change: Social Citizenship
Marshall defined social citizenship in two general ways right at the start of his essay: “the right to a
modicum of economic welfare and security” and “the right to live the life of a civilized being.” Social
citizenship is most of the time give attention for the following issues.
 Associated with equality of status and horizontal redistribution rather than vertical
redistribution.
 Advocates “class abatement,” not a classless society.
 Equality of status is more important than equality of outcome
 Universal benefits symbolize the fact of social equality by conferring on everybody a badge
of citizenship, eliminating any public distinction between the social classes, between rich
and poor, the eligible and the non-eligible.
 Universalism was not seen as an end in itself, rather as a means to the end of integration.
Fundamental historical reason for universality is the avoidance of stigma.
 Targeted towards the ‘helpless and hopeless of the population’ … and was now extended to
all citizens”
 The inequalities of the market had to be contained by the state in order to promote social
stability, balancing the socially divisive effects of market-based inequalities by the
integrative experience of solidarity generated by social citizenship rights”
 Equality of status and equality of opportunity
 Incorporating positive freedom into citizenship
As a legal status, citizenship is universal within the state, which means that every-one that fulfil the
requirements established by the constitution has a set of civil, political, and social rights and duties that
determines their access to social and economic resources. However, universality of citizenship assumes
that laws and rules say the same for all and apply to all in the same way, ignoring inequalities of
wealth, status and power among citizens. Universal citizenship represses differences and inequalities
amongst individuals and groups, but it does not suppress those differences and inequalities. Therefore,
11
"the attempt to realize an ideal of universal citizenship will tend to exclude or to put at a disadvantage
some groups, even when they have formally equal citizenship status". That is because "in a society
where some groups are privileged while others are oppressed, insisting that as citizens persons should
leave behind their particular affiliations and experiences to adopt a general point of view serves only to
reinforce that privilege; for the perspectives and interests of the those of other groups.
The Foundation of labor Rights: Economic Citizenship
Economic citizenship covers employment, health, and retirement security through the redistribution of
capitalist gains and the use of the state as an agent of investment. Economic citizenship emerged from
the Depression and decolonization as a promise of full employment in the First World and economic
development in the Third. Today, it is in decline, displaced by the historic policy renegotiations of the
1970s conducted by capital, the state, and their intellectual servants in economics that redistributed
income back to bourgeoisies. Dear students, economic citizenship is an analytical, not an emic concept.
Unlike “social economy” or “empowerment” it is not often used as a local term. Yet the ideas connected
with it, namely that economic independence is a key to social and civil participation, are directly relevant to
the discourses in the field. The idea of economic citizenship connotes several elements, to which
different interpreters accord different weight. At the most general level, it means that earning a living is
a basic component of citizenship, because it represents the dual essence of a right and an obligation. It
represents the right to economic freedom and independence, the right to self-support, and by
implication the right to participate in the most important activity of contemporary society.
A. Feminist Perspectives: According to feminist historian Alice Kessler-Harris, to attain full
citizenship women must have access to wage labor. Paradoxically, she argues, the expansion of
women’s social rights in the course of the 20th century has hindered their civil inclusion,
because it slowed down their integration into the workforce. Not wishing to reverse the wheel
and obliterate social security, she nevertheless seeks to create a more comprehensive notion of
citizenship that combines economic security and economic freedom. She offers the term
economic citizenship to “capture those rights and obligations attendant to the daily struggle to
reconcile economic well-being and household maintenance with the capacity to participate more
fully in democratic societies”. Gender-inclusive definition of economic citizenship, therefore,
contains “the right to work at the occupation of one’s choice (where work includes child-
rearing and household maintenance), to earn wages adequate to the support of self and family,
to a non-discriminatory job market, to the education and training that facilitates access to it, to
the social benefits necessary to sustain and support labor-force participation”.

12
 B. Community Economic Development Perspective: Community economic development tends
to be strongly holistic and participatory, encouraging the involvement of local businesses,
fostering volunteer work, promoting education, and putting much emphasis on ideas such as
community solidarity, local knowledge, and social sustainability. Such projects are often also
characterized by a feminist perspective.
C. Free-Market Perspectives: Bringing this concise review full circle, ideas of economic citizenship
are found also among those who believe that the market is the best regulator of all types of social
problems. Somewhat similarly to the feminist discourse led by Kessler-Harris and Schultz, the free-
market perspective of economic citizenship tends to be rather theoretical and replete with legalistic
rationality. Thematically though, it is dominated by images of individuals as rational actors
operating to maximize gains, leaving gender and ethnicity, and to a lesser degree also community,
conspicuously out of the equation. To an extent, this discourse too acknowledges the problem of
social inequalities, yet concerns about class disparities and economic security remain secondary to
the value of individual freedom and economic growth. A lucid example of a free-market approach to
citizenship is found in discussions about the regulation of global work migration. For several
decades now, economists in the US have promoted the idea of selling citizenship rights as a way to
allocate immigration certificates and permanent residency
Cultural foundation of citizenship
Cultural citizenship concerns the maintenance and development of cultural lineage via education,
custom, language, and religion, and the positive acknowledgement of difference in and by the
mainstream. Most proponents of cultural citizenship argue that identity is developed and secured
through a cultural context. On this reading, collective senses of self are more important than monadic
ones, and rights and responsibilities can be determined in accordance with cultural membership rather
than the individual.
 First, the debate over the rights of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic Societies, discussed in such
terms as multiculturalism and the politics of recognition;
 Second, the responsibilities of democratic citizenship, in what some have called the civic virtue
debate
 Multiculturalism: a social theory that seeks to understand how different cultures might best live
together.
 Cultural citizenship is a politics of ‘educated’ dialogue, contested forms of understanding, respect
and democratic public space. Arguably, many current social movements, from the anti-globalization

13
 protestors to proponents of multiculturalism, have the deepening and widening of democracy as one
of their central aims.
 Cultural citizenship should be viewed in terms of satisfying demands for full inclusion into the
social community. Such claims should be seen in the context of the waning of the welfare state and
class identities, and the formation of new social and cultural movements focusing on the rights of
groups from children to the disabled. Cultural rights, in this sense, herald ‘a new breed of claims for
unhindered representation, recognition without marginalisation, acceptance and integration without
normalising distortion.
The Paradox and Dilemma of Citizenship
The social and moral dispositions that increasingly have come to be linked to citizenship, such as good
neighbourliness, are certainly important supplements to any political framework, no matter how
extensive. Rules and regulations cannot cover everything, and their being followed cannot depend on
coercion alone. If people acted in a socially responsible way only because they feared being punished
otherwise, it would be necessary to create a police state of totalitarian scope to preserve social order –
a remedy potentially far worse than the disorder it would seek to prevent. But we cannot simply rely on
people acting well either. It is not just that some people may take advantage of the goodness of others.
Humans are also fallible creatures, possessing limited knowledge and reasoning power, and with the
best will in the world are likely to err or disagree.
Most complex problems raise a range of moral concerns, some of which may conflict, while the chain
of cause and effect that produced them, and the likely consequences of any decisions we make to solve
them, can all be very hard if not impossible to know for sure. Calling citizenship the ‘right to have
rights’ indicates how access to numerous rights depends on membership of a political community.
However, many human rights activists have criticized the exclusive character of citizenship for this
very reason, maintaining that rights ought to be available to all on an equal basis regardless of where
you are born or happen to live. As a result, they have sometimes argued against any limits on access to
citizenship. Rights should transcend the boundaries of any political community and not depend on
either membership or participation. Though there is much justice in these criticisms, they are deficient
in three main respects.
1. The citizens of well-run democracies enjoy a level and range of entitlements that extend beyond
what most people would characterize as human rights – that is, rights that we are entitled to
simply on humanitarian grounds.
2. Rights also result from the positive activities of citizens themselves and their contributions to
the collective goods of their political community. In this respect, citizenship forms the ‘right to
14
 have rights’ in placing in citizens’ own hands the ability to decide which rights they will
provide for and how. Some countries might choose to have high taxes and generous public
health, education, and social security schemes, say, others to have lower taxes and less generous
public provision of these goods, or more spending on culture or on police and the armed forces.
3. None of the above rules out recognizing the ‘right to have rights’ as a human right that creates
an obligation on the part of existing democratic states to aid rather than hinder democratization
processes in non-democratic states, to give succour to asylum seekers and to have equitable and
non-discriminatory naturalization procedures for migrant workers willing to commit to the
duties of citizenship in their adopted countries.
Hence membership, rights, and participation go together. It is through being a member of a political
community and participating on equal terms in the framing of its collective life that we enjoy rights to
pursue our individual lives on fair terms with others. If we put these three components together, we
come up with the following definition of citizenship:
Citizenship is a condition of civic equality. It consists of membership of a political community where
all citizens can determine the terms of social cooperation on an equal basis. This status not only
secures equal rights to the enjoyment of the collective goods provided by the political association but
also involves equal duties to promote and sustain them including the good of democratic citizenship
itself.
Across the globe, as the concepts of rights are expanded, the traditional boundaries between the state,
civil society and the private sector are becoming blurred, requiring a rethinking of the roles and
relationships of governments, the corporate sector and citizens. Since the last decade of the twentieth
century, many countries have pursued new mechanisms to promote more direct citizen engagement in
the processes of governance, ranging from the creation of new decentralised institutions, to a wide
variety of participatory and consultative processes in national and global policy deliberations.
Rhetorically at least, there has been increasing emphasis on using such mechanisms to support
inclusion of the poorest social groups, those who do not usually have sufficient resources (economic,
educational, political) to influence the outcomes of traditional policy processes. Signalling at once the
perceived inefficacy of formal representative mechanisms and a growing concern with means of
enabling otherwise excluded groups to engage in shaping the institutions that affect their lives, these
strategies seek to create and make use of new political spaces.

15