Citizenship

This article explains how we ordinary subjects of a state who are neither political leaders nor functionaries are responsible for outcomes that are properly attributed to that state and that took place during our adult lifetime. Its focus is on the connection we forge to those outcomes via our obedience alone. If our responsibility as subjects is justified, it would apply under all regime types including oppressive and authoritarian ones. The argument is that this responsibility can only be justified within (...) a minimal account of agency and a bare-bones account of responsibility. Thus, while we incur a burden of responsibility for the state via our obedience alone, that burden does not suffice to either blame us or extract remedies from us for state injustices. For us obedient subjects, however, it is important that we be cognizant of this burden as it marks the most minimal agency we exercise in the state. (shrink)

This paper adds a new perspective to recent debates about the political nature of rights through attention to their distinctive role within social movement practices of moral critique and social struggle. The paper proceeds through a critical examination of the Political Constitutionalist theories of rights politics proposed by Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy. While political constitutionalists are correct to argue that rights are ‘contestable’ and require democratic justification, they construe political activity almost exclusively with reference to voting, parties and parliamentary (...) law-making, neglecting the vital role rights play in political struggle outside and against the official institutions of democratic citizenship. In contrast to the political constitutionalist stress on the patient and reciprocal negotiation of rights within formal electoral processes, this paper locates the political nature of rights in their conflictual logic as ‘claims’ in multiple spheres that function to mobilise oppos... (shrink)

If states have the moral authority to decide their memberships by denying citizenship, I argue that they may also strip citizenship, from law-abiding members, for the same reasons. The only real difference is that when states revoke citizenship they may need to compensate people for their prior contributions, but that is not unlike what frequently occurs in divorce. Once just termination rules are established, stripping citizenship could become, like divorce, an everyday event. Partly because of this implication, we should reject (...) the membership authority of states. (shrink)

Communitarian writers argue that social identity is deeply important to individual autonomy and thus liberal societies have an obligation to recognize identity. Any liberal view that attempts to account for this charge must specify a procedure to recognize identity that also ensures that the liberal sense of autonomy is not weakened. In this article, I develop such an account. I argue that liberals must distinguish an identity that belongs to particular persons (particularized identity) from the collective form of that identity. (...) For instance, Naisha will have her own particularized way of being Indian in addition to the collective form of the culture that she shares with others. To determine which acts would be about recognizing the particularized form, I provide a counterfactual test. One major implication of the test is that special collective rights would not be endorsed. At the same time, the test is not equivalent to the liberal positions of insisting either that rights belong to individuals or that individuals are not harmed. Because identity is almost always viewed in terms of groups, valuing identity seems to be at odds with the principles of liberalism and democratic theory in which individual persons are the ultimate source of value. I show that there is a significant way to recognize identity that is harmonious with these principles. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of China’s rapid social change in recent decades, this article explores the social categorizations of class and citizenship and how these have evolved in terms of structure and discourse. In order to do so, possibilities of employing Beck’s theory of second modernity to the case of China are explored. While China does not fit into Beck’s theory on all accounts, it is argued here that his individualization thesis can be fruitfully employed to make sense of China’s ongoing (...) process of modernization. It may provide a welcome new starting point for analyses of China’s current social developments beyond the “simple” modernization theories that still dominate in China studies. (shrink)

The main thesis can be summarized the following way: If freedom-status is the master good for republicans then, when democratic participation and mandatory citizenship undermine the self-respect of permanent minorities, self-alienation becomes a political status compatible with the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination. By self-alienation I understand the voluntary withdrawal of active democratic participation, the rejection of national membership as citizen, and the assumption of the status of permanent resident. The paper argues that permanent residency and national citizenship must (...) be conceived as equivalent statuses in terms of non-domination and therefore, as compatible forms of democratic equality. (shrink)

Nicholas Wolterstorff and Christopher J. Eberle have defended the view that the ethics of liberal citizenship allows citizens to publicly support the passage of coercive laws based solely on their religious convictions. They also develop positive conceptions of virtuous citizenship that place moral limits on how citizens may appeal to their religion. The question I address in this essay is whether the limits they impose on citizens’ appeals to their religion are adequate. Since Eberle’s “ideal of conscientious engagement” provides us (...) with the most extensive statement of these limits, it is the primary focus of my attention here. My conclusion is that in its current form, Eberle’s ideal is not constraining enough. In the first section, I argue that Eberle’s ideal does not require citizens to be self-critical enough about their religious and political commitments. In the second section, I highlight a conflict between Eberle’s ideal and the need for citizens to respect the religious freedom of their fellow citizens. I argue that the way to resolve this conflict is to adopt a more fine-grained conception of religious reasons and to hold that citizens should not rely on religious reasons of certain kinds. In the final section, I argue that laws punishing or discouraging homosexual conduct (which Eberle’s ideal would apparently allow) violate what Wolterstorff calls “the Idea of liberal democracy” and so are not the kind of proposal that virtuous citizens can defend. (shrink)

This article attempts to bring into discussion concepts from contemporary theories of republicanism from the vantage point of the particular theory of republican citizenship advocated by David Miller, and based on national identity. It emerges from the discussion of his notions of national identity and republican citizenship that he works with two parallel notions of political obligation: one that can be intimated from Miller’s Rousseauian vision of a political community as a community of common will, and another that can be (...) derived from his discussion of republican citizenship as a practice of deliberation. After identifying these two notions of political obligation as ancestral obligation and political obligation as public practice I proceed to show that they work independently of one another, and that the latter is to be preferred to the former. I conclude by suggesting that these findings entitle us to think that national identity is neither a necessary nor a desirable foundation for republican citizenship. (shrink)

This article explores the civic republican conception of citizenship underlying the Labour government's programme of civil renewal and the introduction of education for democratic citizenship. It considers the importance of the cultivation of civic virtue through political participation for such developments and it reviews the research into how service learning linked to character education can lead to the civic virtue of duty or social responsibility.

This article questions the meanings and expression of "citizenship" in the context of new Latina and Latino migration into the southeastern United States-a region long marked by legally policed racial systems and now experiencing the varied shocks of globalization. Focused on a legislative campaign that won access to a state-issued driver's licence for undocumented migrants in Tennessee in spring 2001, the article explores some of the tensions that emerged on the road to this unlikely victory and raises questions for the (...) immigrants' rights movement in the US about the costs and gains that may follow from different ways of framing its demands. The dominant frame this particular campaign adopted was a pragmatic and politically acceptable call to improve traffic safety, one that reflected a conscious choice to downplay issues of rights, justice or global perspective. Yet the article also reports that the campaign in fact created and used opportunities for activists to raise issues related to migrant rights. It also made a dramatic, albeit temporary, improvement in the daily lives of migrants in the state. The article then sketches three citizenship norms that current struggles might prefigure. These three norms are: the full right to international mobility of human beings; the right to identity; and duties of citizenship in a globalizing world. (shrink)

This article describes the Ethics and Citizenship Program, a moral education project developed by the Brazilian government to promote education in ethics and citizenship in Brazilian fundamental and middle schools through four key themes: ethics, democratic coexistence, human rights and social inclusion. Some findings from a research project that investigated whether such a program did in fact promote the ethical and citizenship awareness of participating students are outlined. As an introduction to the paper's main concerns, the Brazilian socioeconomic context is (...) characterised, followed by a description of the historical background of moral education in Brazil. (shrink)

In Cultivating Citizens Dwight Allman and Michael Beaty bring together some of America's leading social and political thinkers to address the question of civic vitality in contemporary American society. The resulting volume is a serious reflection on the history of civil society and a rich and rewarding conversation about the future American civic order.

Scouting for Boys is the original blueprint and 'self-instructor' of the Boy Scout Movement. An all-time bestseller, it is both a handbook and a philosophy for a way of living that replaces self with service, puts country before individual, and duty above all. As well as practical instructions on how to light fires and stalk men and animals, it includes sections on chivalry, self-discipline, self-improvement and citizenship. This new edition reveals its maverick complexity and explores its contradictions about sexuality, the (...) environment, and the empire. (shrink)

The social boundaries of citizenship involve relations of exclusion and inclusion within the global economy and specific nation-states. A case study of contemporary Canadian federal policy regarding the recruitment and regulation of foreign domestic workers reveals that, despite postwar trends toward liberalization of immigration policy and general advances made by Canadian workers, citizenship rights for third-world female domestics have declined. This apparently "anomalous" non-citizenship status can be better understood through an examination of the social relations and discourses that reproduce conditions (...) of bonded servitude for foreign domestics. It is argued that citizenship must be understood as a variable and unequal process shaped by global realities, state intervention, and racialized, gendered discourses. (shrink)

Economic crises have historically left immigrants vulnerable due to their insecure positions in the labor market and tenuous social and political ties to host country populations. During the Great Depression, citizenship status also emerged as a key factor determining the rights and protections offered to foreign-born populations in the two main receiving states of the interwar period: the United States and France. This article investigates the ways in which citizenship began to intrude into areas of social and political life where (...) it previously held little relevance. To explain this phenomenon, it draws upon and supplements theories on the relationship between the formation of states and the making of modern national communities, focusing on the expanding powers of nation states within and across international borders after World War I. In both France and the United States, there were notable expansions in their power to control migration and fund social assistance programs. Similarly, sending states were also expanding their power to provide “remote protections” for their citizens abroad through bilateral labor treaties or expanded consular support. As states began to do more things with greater capacity, new and firmer boundaries were forged between citizens and noncitizens as well as between sending and receiving states. A key consequence of this was unprecedented pressure to repatriate. Contrary to much of the previous scholarship on this subject, this article stresses the evolving powers of both sending and receiving states and the corresponding elevation of citizenship status as key enablers of repatriation. (shrink)

Regional integration, mass migration and the development of transnational organizations are just some of the factors challenging the traditional definitions of citizenship. In this important new book, Rainer Bauböck argues that citizenship rights will have to extend beyond nationality and state territory if liberal democracies are to remain true to their own principles of inclusive membership and equal basic rights.

Although foreign workers contribute to the economy and society, their lack of citizenship renders them unequal, vulnerable and exploitable. In this article, I suggest that the citizenship principle of jus domicile can address this aspect of inequality and exploitation experienced by migrant labour. In addition, I argue that the jus domicile principle should be combined with open borders. In making this argument, I draw on a dialectical methodology and a diverse literature on social justice and liberal political theory. The model (...) I am developing is not necessarily for immediate policy implementation but rather presents a vision for a future of free mobility and settlement. (shrink)