Unit five

Anupama Roy - Citizenship

 Cont.
• The notion of citizenship has evolved historically and
underlies the complexities of contemporary debate.
• Contemporary debates on citizenship raises questions around
notions of equality and rights, issues of individual , group and
community rights, active and passive citizenship and relative
primacy of rights and duties.
• Two dominant strands or traditions of rights and citizenship
can be seen to have developed over these periods:
• Civil republicanism, characterized by the ideas of common
good, public spirit, political participation and civil virtue.
• Liberal citizenship with an emphasis on individual rights and
private interests.
• The Marxists and feminists have criticized both these
traditions as exclusionary and have suggested radical changes
in the theory and practice of citizenship.
 Cont.
• What do we mean by citizenship?
• Citizenship is one of the most commonly used terms in a democracy.
• It is used at all levels of politics; in formal legal documents, in laws, in
constitution, in party manifestos and in speeches.
• But what is citizenship? Or , who is a citizen?
• A citizen is not who lives in a nation-state .
• Among those who live in a nation-state, there are citizens and
foreigners. A citizen is not just an resident. He or she does not
merely live in the territory of a state.
• A citizen is one who takes part in the process of government.
• In a democratic society, there must be a two-way traffic between the
citizens and the government. All governments demand certain duties
from the citizens.
• But in return the state must also admit some demands of the citizens
on itself. These are called rights.
• A citizens must have political rights. A person who is ruled by laws
but who has no political rights is not a citizens.
 Cont.

• citizenship is seen in terms of a legal / formal status – having a

specific nationality, holding a passport, and deriving from this
status, entitlements and claims,
• The rights guaranteed by the constitution, as well as specific
duties and responsibilities which the constitution may lay
down.
• The idea of ​citizenship, however, goes beyond the legal formal
framework to denote actual membership in a political
community.
• The commonly accepted definition of citizenship by T.H
Marshall in citizenship and social class (1950) as full and equal
membership in a political community.
 Cont.
• Historical development of the concept of citizenship.
• The word citizenship is derived from the Latin civis and its Greek
equivalent polites, meaning a member of the polis or city.
• The idea of citizenship was made popular by the French
Revolution in 1789.
• The idea of citizenship understood in present day as a system of
equal right, as opposed to privilege based on condition of birth.
• With the development of capitalism and liberalism, the idea of ​
citizens deepened as individuals holding rights irrespective of
their class, race, gender, ethnicity, etc.
• Since the 1980s, globalization and multiculturalism have
provided contexts in which the classical and liberal notions of
citizenship has been challenged.
 Cont.
• Thus, the development of ideas that surround the concept of
citizenship can be attributed to four broad historical periods.
• 1. Classical Graceo-Roman period
• 2. late medieval period and early modern period including the
period of the French and American Revolutions
• 3. The 19th and 20th centuries – capitalism, liberalism and
universal citizenship”.

• 4. the contests over the form and substance of citizenship in

the 20th century with an increasing preoccupation with
multiculturalism and community rights.
 Cont
• The classical period and civil republican citizenship: civic virtue,
freedom and active citizenship.
• The term civic republicanism refers to a constitutional government
based on the principles power- sharing to prevent arbitrary authority.
• In civil republicanism, citizens are involved in public affairs for the
mutual benefit of the individual and the community.
• The Greek republics or city-states, Athens and Sparta were exponents
of the classical institution of citizenship that we identify with the civic
republican tradition.
• Citizenship in Greek republics and city-states was an expression of
the underlying central form of the political element in human nature.
• Greek republics such as Athens and Sparta were closely intertwined,
characterized by self-governing political communities, small
populations, and minimal social differentiation .
 Cont.

• The organization of the republic was based on familiarity and

trust, principles of active political participation.
• The priority of the public and political aspects of life and the
primacy of the identity of man as citizens.
• Citizenship was limited to those who had the ability to
participate in the process of governance and to free native
born men.
• But women, children, salves and resident aliens were
excluded in the process of governance and participation.
• Citizens was constituted only a small part of the population.
• Thus, the classical notion of citizenship enunciated its
association with privileges.
 Cont.
• Roman Imperialism:
• The Greek idea of ​citizenship in the form of active participation
was modified in the time of Roman imperialism.
• Even as fresh grounds of inclusion were added, a need to
integrate a diverse population into the Roman Empire, an
upgrade was introduced within the framework of citizenship.
• Only one type of citizenship existed within the polis, under which
all citizens enjoyed the privileges of participation and
governance.
• The idea of ​citizenship was modified by the introduction of a
passive citizenship as a legal status.
• The introduction of passive citizenship brought a large number of
people ethnically distinct from the Romans.
• Under Roman influence they were protected by a common set of
laws.
 Cont.
• Subsequently, citizenship could now be imagined not solely as
participation in the making and implementing of laws.
• But also as a legal status involving certain rights and equal
protection of the law.
• The new element of citizenship as a legal status added a
hierarchy of status to citizens by introducing only legal rights,
not political rights.
• Moreover, women and the lower classes continued to be
denied the status of citizens.
• The new element of citizenship, citizens were required to
develop qualities of civic virtue.
• A term derived from the Latin words virus, which mean
manliness in the sense of performing military duty, patriotism,
and devotion to duty and the law.
 Cont.

• The Late Medieval and Early Modern periods: Legal

protection of liberty and passive citizenship:
• Around the 16th century, the notion of citizenship as a legal
status seemed to have become dominant.
• The aim of absolutist states to impose their authority over
heterogeneous populations.
• The absolutist states in which a citizen came to be defined by
Jean Bodin, the 16th century jurist, as one who enjoys the
common liberty and protection of authority.
• In this view, citizenship was primarily a passive idea.
• Citizenship in this period did not stand for common public
responsibilities and civic virtues. Instead, the notion of
general liberty became the primary concern of citizenship.
• This concern included a passive assumption of citizenship,
claims of safety or security.
 Cont.
• The protection of authority was needed primarily to preserve
this domain.
• Unlike the classical idea of citizenship, citizens were not
political people.
• The political community was not the predominant core of
their lives, but rather the outer framework, in which each
citizen enjoyed the liberty of private pleasures and pursuits of
happiness .
• The protection and security of the private domain in which
these pleasures were realized.
• Thus in this period the principle of imperial inclusiveness
seems to have brought about a passive notion of citizenship
as a legal status.
 Cont.

• French revolution:
• The French Revolution was a rebellion against the passive
citizenship of early modern times.
• It attempted to revive the republican ideals of participation
against the claims of empire and monarchical statehood.
• The French Revolution tradition introduced an important
element to citizenship that changed the way rights were
incorporated into the notion of citizenship.
• In fact, the way citizenship is understood today as a system of
horizontal (equal) rights against a hierarchical (feudal) system
of privileges, has its roots in the principles of the French
Revolution.
• The French Revolution and the ‘Declaration of the Rights of
Man gave rise to the notion of the citizen as a free and
autonomous individual.
 Cont.
• Thus, the concept of citizens established by
the French Revolution combined the classical
meaning of citizenship as civic participation
with modern liberal individualism.
 Cont.
• (3) The 19th and 20th centuries – capitalism, liberalism and universal
citizenship”.
• The rise of a market economy and an influential bourgeoisie was
accompanied by the dismantling of the existing feudal order.
• The emergence of market economy that emphasizes on autonomy and
individual freedom.
• The idea of citizenship that emerged in this context was characterized, by
individual rights and individual mobility across social class.
• It made possible by the idea of equality among citizens and the
replacement of a localized civil society by an all encompassing national
political community.
 Cont.
• T.H Marshal: Equal and Universal Citizenship.
• T. H Marshall states that the concept of citizenship developed
in a peculiar relationship of conflict and collusion with
capitalism.
• Marshall’s widely accepted definition of citizens as free and
equal members of a political community comes primarily
from the study of citizenship as a process of expanding
equality against the inequality of social class.
• In Citizenship and Social Class (1950), Marshall distinguished
the three aspects of rights that make up citizenship.
• 1. civil,
• 2. political
• 3. and social.
 Cont.
• 1. Civil rights
• Civil rights defined by Marshall as right necessary for
individual freedom, include freedoms of speech, movement
conscience, the rights to equality, equality before law and the
right to own property.
• 2. political rights:
• Political rights viz. the right to vote, the right to stand for
elections and the right to hold public office, provided the
individual with the opportunity to participate in political life.
• 3. social rights:
• Social rights argued Marshall, guaranteed the individual a
minimum social status and provided the basis for the exercise
of both civil and political rights.
• There were the positive rights to live the life of a civilized
being according to the standards prevailing in society.
 Cont.

• These standards of life and the social heritage of society are

realized through active intervention by the state in the form
of social services.
• Criticism:
• Feminist
 Cont.

• Feminism and citizenship:

• Feminists have shown how the idea of ​citizenship has been
particularly hostile to women.
• Feminists of all classes have criticized the dominant notions of
citizenship on two points:
• First, they argue that citizenship is gender blind.
• Modern societies are steeped in patriarchal traditions, which
create male domination and privilege.
• Equality in such conditions remains a façade and women's
inequality is perpetuated by policies that operate within the
framework of formal equality.
• Second,
• The notion of citizenship have produced dichotomies where
space for citizenship became increasingly indentified with the
male.
 Cont.
• The public and private distinction was essential for the assertion
of the liberal notion of citizen as the autonomous individual.
• it also led to the identification of the private with the domestic
which played an important in the exclusion and subordination of
women.
• Thus feminists have argued that both ancient and modern
concepts of citizenship have been inimical to women.
• Women were either excluded from citizenship in the classical
tradition or were indirectly integrated into the French revolution
tradition.
• Modern citizenship not entirely excluding women, incorporated
them on the basis of their socially useful and dependent roles as
mothers and wives, thereby placing them outside the sphere of
politics.
 Cont.
•Differentiated and multicultural citizenship:
•Contemporary debates on citizenship and rights have questions the idea that the
citizens can enjoy rights independent of the context to which she/he belongs.

•In citizenship theory since the 1980s, multiculturalism, with plurality, diversity and
difference, has become an important reference for the re-theorizing of citizenship.

•This contest terrain in effect to the unmasking of those differences that were earlier
seen as irrelevant to citizenship.

•There is a growing effort to redefine citizenship by giving due importance to cultural

differences among individuals.

•The notions of multiculturalism and minority rights have been implemented in

contemporary times as democratic values, allowing cultural communities to claim
inherent rights and negotiate fair terms of inclusion in the national political space.
 Cont.

• This influential strand within citizenship that cherishes

cultural diversity and envisages a society in which different
communities share a common identity while maintaining their
cultural origins.
• Differentiated citizenship was put forward by theorists who
realized the common rights of citizenship, originally defined
by white people in a class-differentiated society.
• The common idea of citizenship could not accommodate the
needs of large number of ethnic, religious, and linguistic
groups, who feel excluded from the common rights of
citizenship.
• They emphasized that instead of masking these differences in
the allocation of rights, effort must be made to take account
of the specificity of the different circumstances of citizens.
 Cont.

• Many theorists argue that different groups can be

accommodated in common citizenship only by adopting what
Iris Marion Young (1989) called 'differentiated citizenship'.
• ‘Differentiated citizenship‘, which means that members of
certain groups should be accommodated not only as
individual but also through their group and their rights would
partially depend upon their group membership.