What is citizenship

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What is citizenship?

• Refers to the active carrying out of rights and
  duties
• Nationality passive acquisition of membership,
  blood relatedness or share culture
• Nationality and citizenship interlinked
• Status connected historically to the city (Latin
  civis) and the state Greek polies
• Jus sanguinis (ethnic descent) and jus soli
  (residential criterion) historical and country
  specific

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What is ethnicity

• Two diverging discourses
• 1) Primordial fixed, fundamental and rooted in
  the unchangeable circumstances of birth
• 2) Circumstantialism/constructivists ethnicity
  product of concrete social and historical
  situations

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Welsh nationalists

• Other than the Welsh language Welshness is
  distinct for their seperate history, instinctive
  radicalism in religion and politics, contempt for
  social pretentiousness, personal warmth and
  exuberance, sociability, love of music and near
  obsession with rugby

4
Is there Danish nationalism?

• Nationalist Political Parties?
• Banal nationalism Dannebrog
• Flagpoles in many gardens
• Flying the flag at birthdays, ceremonies,
  political party meetings
• Ideology of ethnic identification (danskhed),
  ethnic criteria of political membership (Danish
  citizenship), a state context (Denmark) a claim
  to a collective historical destiny (the Danish
  way)

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Tug of war btw the pull of nation-state
cohesiveness and the push of global processes

• Components of nationalism (multiple
  potentiality)
• Vehicle for ethnic identity and political
  identification
• Ideological modernization and ardent
  traditionalism
• For rationality and passion
• For past nostalgia and future hope
• For anonymity and familiarity
• For the most respectable and the despictable
  values

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Connecting policy domains internal and external
to the nation-state

• Extent how the boundaries of membership within a
  polity and between polities should be defined
• Content how the benefits and burdens of
  membership should be allocated
• Depth how the thickness of identities of
  members should be comprehended and accommodated

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Citizenship status Marshall (1950)

• Civil rights rights to indivdual freedom,
  rights to propety, personal liberty and justice
• Political rights political participation
  holding office or voting
• Social rights economic and social security
  within a modern welfare state
• Equality
• Recognition
• Economic redistribution dismantle class
  inequalities

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Critic of Marshalls definition

• Ignores the ways in which racialization functions
  to obstruct access to full citizenship
• Need for a concept that grasps the legal status
  dimension as well as the dimension of national
  identity (I.e. consciousness of collective
  membership)
• Formal and substantial citizenship

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Theories on citizenship

• Liberal (John Stuart Mill, Locke, Rawls)
• Communitarian thick (Sandel, Macintyre) and
  thin (Taylor)
• Republican (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
• Differences/Similarities liberty, equality,
  pluralism

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Liberal theory

• Liberty for the individual
• Strong differentiation between public (logic of
  rationality)/private sphere (different cultural
  and religious ways of life and beliefs)
• Justice in the distribution of public goods

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Communitarian theory

• Community a social and cultural community
  shaping the identity of the individual
• History, tradition and culture
• Strong distinction between Them and Us (see
  Hylland Eriksen)

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Republican theory

• We have physicists, geometricians, chemists,
  astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters in
  plenty but we have no longer a citizen among us
  Rousseau 1750.
• Worries about declining electoral participation
  and eroding social capital
• Legal status, various privileges/immunities also
  commitment to the common good and active
  participation in public affairs
• Both the individual and community in focus

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Naturalisation

• Refers to the procedure by which non-nationals
  can acquire citizenship
• Issue of dual citizenship

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German case

• Minimum prerequisites for naturalisation(Piper
  (1998), p. 88)
• 10 year period of residence
• A clean criminal record
• Accomodation in Germany
• A regular income
• Good command of the German language
• Renunciation of the original citizenship

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EU citizenship

• Emerged 1) Internal Market, 2) need to delineate
  individuals with EC member nationality from
  citizens of non-member states
• Symbolic more than substantial new rights
• Third country nationals (turks living in Germany
  fx.) are not included
• Intergovernmental not supranational on this field

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Challenges to the concept of citizenship

• Citizenship as intersecting, multiple and
  overlapping
• To protect nature
• To enable access to cultural capital
• To recognise ethnic identities
• To eliminate discrimination against women and gays

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Denizens

• Pay taxes, access to most social welfare rights
  but excluded from political participation
• Difficulties in naturalisation

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Core readings

• Göle, Nilüfer (1996) The forbidden Modern
  Civilisation and Veiling. Ann Arbor University
  of Michigan Press
• Brubaker (1992) Citizenship and Nationhood in
  Germany and France
• Handbook on citizenship (2002)