Definition Of Citizenship Research Articles

‘Irishness’, the 1937 Constitution, and Citizenship: A Gender and Ethnicity View

This paper argues that ‘Irishness’ has not been sufficiently problematised in relation to gender and ethnicity in discussions of Irish national identity, nor has the term ‘Irish women’ been ethnically problematised. Sociological and feminist analyses of the access by women to citizenship of the Republic of Ireland have been similarly unproblematised. This paper interrogates some discourses of Irish national identity, including the 1937 Constitution, in which difference is constructed in religious, not ethnic terms, and in which women are constructed as ‘naturally’ domestic. Ireland's bourgeois nationalism privileged property owning and denigrated nomadism, thus excluding Irish Travellers from definitions of ‘Irishness’. The paper then seeks to problematise T.H. Marshall's definition of citizenship as ‘membership in a community’ from a gender and ethnicity viewpoint and argues that sociological and feminist studies of the gendered nature of citizenship in Ireland do not address access to citizenship by Traveller and other racialized women which this paper examines in brief. It does so in the context of the intersection between racism and nationalism, and argues that the racism implied in the narrow definition of ‘Irishness’ is a central factor in the limited access by minority Irish women to aspects of citizenship. It also argues that racism not only interfaces with other forms of exclusion such as class and gender, but also broadens our understanding of the very nature of Irish national identity.

La politique sans l’État. Sur la définition néorépublicaine de la citoyenneté de Herman van Gunsteren

H. van Gunsteren's definition of citizenship as a publicoffice that consists of dealing with plurality, is analysed into two different perspectives: a communautarian axis (the ffirmation that the principle and the end of politics is plurality) and a republican axis (the idea that, as Hannah Arendt has already argued, the public domain as to be based upon itself though symbolically determined institutions). The A. criticises his restriction of the political public domain to the classical State-centered problematics, as opposed to a local, continuous, micropolitical attempt to procede any given differences into reflected ones through the required republican institutions, which was the original content of his own neorepublican citizenship

Citizenship and Nationality in Democratic Systems: Approaches to Defining and Acquiring Membership in the Political Community

This article analyzes the approaches of five democratic countries—France, the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and Israel—to determining membership in the national community. It examines the different definitions of citizenship and the variable uses of ascriptive and functional criteria, the mix of interpretations of jus sanguinis and jus soli, and the evolution of policies of naturalization. It deals with the circumstances surrounding the building of nation and state as explanatory factors, and discusses the implications of transnational and supranational patterns of socioeconomic involvements and entitlements for traditional approaches to citizenship.

Burghers into citizens: Urban and national citizenship in the Netherlands during the revolutionary era (c. 1800)

Citizenship, Charles Tilly has said, is "a continuing series of transactions between persons and agents of a given state in which each has enforceable rights and obligations uniquely by virtue of 1) the persons' membership in an exclusive category and 2) the agent's relation to the state rather than any authority the agent may enjoy."1 Three elements are crucial to this definition: the nature of the "persons," i.e., citizens, the nature of the authority that Tilly foreshortens as "the state," and finally the reciprocal relationship between these two actors. The importance of this definition is that it allows for variation, through time and space, and presents the bond between citizen and state as one that provides both parties with entitlements on the other. The problem with such a wide definition, however, is that it makes it difficult to distinguish between various types of ties between state officials and inhabitants of the state. In other words, when we let go of the formal aspect in the definition of citizenship, it tends to blur into a very wide range of issues indeed.2 Instead, this article will define the "exclusive category" from the outset as "citizenship" in the legal sense. Thus, the "people" discussed in this article are citizens. The other party presents problems, too. Under the Old Regime, no such thing as Dutch citizenship existed. The state, i.e., the Dutch Republic, was a federation, composed of seven sovereign provinces. These provinces did not have citizens either, at least in the formal sense. Citizenship in the Dutch Republic was a local, more specifically an urban phenomenon.3 There was nothing unusual in this: urban citizenship was the norm throughout early modern Europe.4 This changed radically during the Napoleonic era, in the Netherlands as much as in other European countries.5 The French revolutionary regime, and its collaborators in the occupied territories, centralized government and administration, and created new ties between themselves and their subjects, in the form of modern citizenship.

Santé et citoyenneté dans la Belgique contemporaine.

We summarize the relations between the development of health policies and the definition of citizenship in Belgium during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the limited scope of the present article we describe the main developments and offer a plausible introduction to subsequent studies. We aim to show that thanks to the scientific study of the changes that took place during two centuries, we can understand the reasons why there are currently so many contradictions in health policy. It is hoped that our findings will help us to better understand the present and prepare for the future.

A Case of Mistaken Identity: The Irish in Postwar Britain

According to the 1948 British Nationality Act, there were three types of people in the world: British subjects, aliens, and Irish citizens?a strange piece of legislation indeed. So strange that one contemporary lawyer re ferred to the Irish provisions of the act as unique in statute law . . . [and] without precedent in legislation dealing with nationality.1 Unique was the provision that any citizen of Eire, although an alien, then or in the future living in the United Kingdom, would be given all the privileges and many of the responsibilities of a British subject without having to become a British subject. Privileges included the right to enter the country freely, take up any employment available, and vote and stand for Parliament; obligations included paying taxes and, after two years continuous resi dence, performing National Service. Thus Britain became perhaps the only country in the world to make no distinction between its own citizens and one group of aliens. In spite of the quirky nature of these provisions, however, they continued to govern relations between the United Kingdom and Ireland even after Ireland left the Commonwealth and became a re public in 1949, and even after the United Kingdom imposed immigration control upon certain classes of real British subjects in 1962, 1968, 1971, and 1981.2 This legislation raises two principal questions: Why did British policy makers create a new class of people for the purposes of nationality law, and why did that class remain constant through so many other changes? Three answers suggest themselves: first, the economic crisis and labor shortage which Britain suffered after World War Two; second, UK policymakers' de termination that members of the British Empire, though rapidly forming a Commonwealth of Nations, should remain united and centered upon Brit ain; third, UK policymakers' racialized understanding of the world's popu lation, which deemed race rather than skin color to be an unmodifiable and genetic characteristic, and which hierarchized European cultures over all others. Together, these questions and answers suggest that postwar Britain's governing elite successfully manipulated notions of identity and definitions of citizenship in order to preserve a useful labor supply and a united empire/Commonwealth. This success itself raises further questions about the fluidity of national identity and the value of migrant labor. Elected in July 1945, Clement Attlee's Labour government promised a new age of social citizenship to be brought about by infrastructural nation alization and the institution of a welfare state; less explicitly, it promised

Language, cultural pluralism and the silencing of minority discourses in England and Wales

Abstract This paper locates the ethnic minority language issue within the broader context of national language policy within the pluralist nation‐state. It is divided into three sections. Section one provides an historical overview of the second language ‘debate’ in England and Wales during the past three decades and discusses it within the absence of a coherent national language policy framework. Section two draws on ethnographic case‐study material obtained in interviews within one school and LEA, and analyses the extent to which, during the last decade, education policy concerns nationally have shifted school priorities in terms of educational provision for second language learners. Section three draws on key issues related to the potential social exclusion of the ethnic minority groups identified in the previous sections. These are discussed within the context of changing migration patterns globally. The dilemmas facing definitions of citizenship within the framework of the projected cultural, economi...

Religious Identity, Citizenship, and Welfare

In addressing the situation of Muslim communities in Britain, it isapparent that one of the major frameworks for understanding their situationhas been the notion of "Citizenship," for citizenship is a means ofidentifying critical aspects of the relationship between the individual andthe state. Following Bottomore (1992), we may make a useful distinctionbetween "formal" and "substantive" citizenship: the former being Simplydefined as "membemhip in a nation state" and the latter as "an array ofcivil, political, and especially social rights, involving also some kind ofparticipation in the business of government'' (ibid.).There are a number of salient points that should be made in relationto examining the implications of this distinction. First, we may note thatthe legal definition of citizenship is always informed by the cultural andethnic agendas historically rooted in the foundation myths of each nationstate.Thus in France, for example, just as the revolutionary iconographyof the Tricolor, Marianne, and Liberty, Equality, and Fratemity continueto serve contemporary national sentiments (Hobsbawm 1983), so todayFrench legal framing of formal citizenship is infused with its revolutionaryroots:La tradition centraliste francaise interdit la reconnaissance dansl'espace public des 'communautes', au sens oii elles existent auWtats-Unis. (Schnapper 1990).Consequently, in France neither ethnicity nor religion are formally relevantin determining access to citizenship ...

The language of citizen democracy

A too restrictive definition of citizenship has reduced public involvement to the mere casting of ballots, and the political role of the citizen to to the consumption of campaign rhetoric. If citizens are to view more active participation in the political process as a means to beneficial social change, methods must be installed to foster greater identification of personal well-being with that of the broader community. Part of the solution lies in rediscovering old definitions of familiar words such as “public”-the organized community acting as a whole — and “politics” — the work of the citizen as influential decision maker and direct problem solver.

Aristotle and the Value of Political Participation

What value should we place on political activity? Is it intrinsically valuable, engaged in for its own sake as part of the good life, as essential to complete development as a human being? Is it, on the other hand, an evil to be avoided at all costs or at best engaged in as a necessary means toward other, nonpolitical goals? Where did Aristotle stand on this issue? He is often seen as supporting the view that politics and political activity belong to the good life itself. This appears implicit, for example, is his doctrine that man is a political animal, in his concept of political rule as the alternation of ruling and being ruled among equals, and in his definition of citizenship as having a share in deliberative and judicial office.' On the other hand, there are parts of Aristotle that appear to support withdrawal from politics or at least reluctant participation. In both Ethics, he argues for the supremacy of philosophical contemplation and clearly prefers the life of the philosopher over the life of the statesman, arguments that are repeated in the Politics. Leisure, not political activity, is the ethical goal to be pursued by his ideal state. If someone of outstanding ability appears, the virtuous citizen will willingly surrender power to him, without, it appears, any loss of virtue or happiness.2 As we shall see, neither of these interpretations is wholly sustainable, and each, as Aristotle himself might have said, has something to contribute to the truth. Aristotle does not reject the whole of ethical and political life in favor of philosophy; but neither is he a wholehearted advocate of political participation as essential for happiness.

Overview: Rethinking politics

Reflection on the traditional role of the town commons as a focal point of public Involvement for citizens underscores the crisis our democratic institutions face: A too restrictive definition of citizenship has reduced public involvement to the mere casting of ballots, and the political role of the citizen to the mere consumption of campaign rhetoric. We must restore institutions of public involvement and strengthen the connections between individual citizens and the broader community.

The concept of citizenship and attitudes toward women in combat

Since the American and French revolutions, the right to bear arms has been an integral aspect of the normative definition of citizenship. Citizenship rights were won by people who were given the opportunity to prove their loyalty through the defense of the state. This right has been denied women who, although they have served in the United States armed forces in relatively low numbers, have been systematically excluded from combat specialties. Attitude data collected from both Army and civilian samples show public opinion to be opposed to women in combat. Women in the Army are less opposed than are men, political liberals less than political conservatives, and respondents with no religious affiliation less than those with church ties. In no group, however, is there majority support for extending the “right to fight” to women.

The Future of the Peace Corps

Beginning as a quantum jump, the Peace Corps faces a crisis of growth. Will it choose consolidation or another quantum jump? It also faces a crisis of skills. Will it be able to recruit the more experienced, higher-skilled personnel needed by the host countries? Starting as a token venture, which few took seriously, the Peace Corps now faces large responsibilities. It is participating in institution—building—in nation-building— on a large scale. It needs to become more professional and more effective, to be seen as a central part of America's over seas education and development programs, and to be integrated with those programs. It needs to find its context in the larger systems it serves: American education and politics, overseas governments and peoples, and international education and de velopment. A 1970 Peace Corps is described—doubled in size and improved in quality: Volunteering is part of a new defini tion of citizenship; Peace Corps service is an integral part of higher education. The flow of Volunteers begins in high school, widens in our colleges and universities, and extends beyond the Peace Corps into new overseas careers. The Peace Corps itself is a kind of university in dispersion.