Understanding Citizenship: Dimensions, Status, and Models
The Multifaceted Concept of Citizenship
The concept of citizenship has many meanings. Its analysis must consider different and complex sides.
Political Dimension
The political dimension of citizenship is the way citizens relate to and express the characteristics of the state. It defines the insertion of citizens in politics. This involves a series of rights and duties that articulate the relationship between the citizen and the state. Citizenship has an essential political dimension, set by the political organization of the state, rights, and responsibilities, in response to different modes that build the city. Citizenship is an evolutionary process.
Cultural Dimension
Humans are born and live in a culture that helps complete their identity; this is cultural identity. Culture offers a way to be recognized as belonging to that cultural dimension. The cultural dimension of citizens leads to a culturally differentiated city within a state, which is a multicultural state. This leads to the recognition of cultural rights for a community of citizens (nation) that occupies a territory and shares a language and culture. This concept is differentiated from the idea of “people” and “culture.”
Status of Citizens
The city, this community, will differ from state politics; it can be national, multinational, a community of states, or cosmopolitan.
Distinction of Two Aspects of the City
Two aspects converge in the city: the legal-political and the cultural. Both must be differentiated, yet they are related. A cultural identity is an element of a city, but it should not be confused with a legal-political identity. This distinction is fundamental to understanding democratic states with the retention of rights.
Subject and Citizen
The virtue of membership in a political community or state does not define the man’s character and condition. A citizen can be a member of a body politic and, at the same time, a subject. A subject is submitted and subjected to authority. In the topic of subjects, individuals are submitted and subject to the authority of political and legal power. The state can be as democratic as it can be totalitarian. Depending on rights or other factors, individuals will be subjects in one way or another. In an absolute, totalitarian state, individuals are not citizens but subjects of the ruler. In a democratic state, individuals are subjects governed by laws, but these laws are approved and legitimized.
Categories within the Concept of City
- Membership: This category refers to the condition of being a member of a political community.
- Integration: This expresses the integrated functioning of individuals within the political community. There are social integration and cultural dimensions, encompassing political aspects. Integrated citizenship requires universality and uniformity of rights and duties, potentially excluding minorities. Differentiated citizenship recognizes specific rights guaranteed by groups.
- Participation: City status implies citizen involvement, both in supporting and increasing its democratic and participatory dimension. Citizenship is passive when individuals are more attentive to their privacy and less involved in public action. It is active politics when participation exceeds the minimum.
- Inclusion and Exclusion: Exclusionary citizenship exists if there is a legal framework and universal homogenizer that does not recognize cultural differences and the specific rights of minorities. Inclusive citizenship recognizes the status of minorities and multicultural aspects, leading to multicultural citizenship.
Models of Citizenship
There are three models of citizenship: liberal, communitarian, and republican. In all, there is a division of citizenship into three elements:
- Civil element: Composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom.
- Political element: Concerns the right to participate in the exercise of political rights.
- Social element: Covers social, economic, and cultural power.
Liberal Citizenship
Liberal citizenship is based on: rights that enhance the individual and the priority of the individual over the state; the private sphere takes precedence over the public; the state must have a minimum required for individual citizen rights (it has an instrumental function); the citizen is externally permanent to the state (a “negative” and individual freedom); citizens are free and equal participants in social cooperation.
Republican Citizenship
Republican citizenship defends that: participatory citizenship is life in public action; there is no private sphere but a cut in the public sphere; republican citizenship engages the interests and values of the political community; the republic is everyone and not only one class; the freedom of an individual is related to the freedom of others; it is active citizenship.
Multicultural Citizenship
Multicultural citizenship is distinct: in contrast with an integrated citizenship, it is about recognizing different types of minority rights within the city. “Different” was compatible with integrated. It distinguishes three types of rights (special representation rights, poly-ethnic rights, and self-government rights), corresponding to three classes of rights within the city (one recognizes the rights of group representation, another addresses ethnic claims, and the third concerns self-government). One of the functions of citizenship is its political community-integrating function. The problem is the point at which distinct citizenship supports and safeguards the integrating character; otherwise, it becomes incompatible and disintegrating. It is necessary to name the communitarian city. Communitarianism is based on specific communities to enhance membership based on shared feelings and identities (ethnic, religious, or linguistic). It is a nationalist citizenship.