Citizenship as practice

GIL ARAUJO, SANDRA; COURTIS, CORINA; YUFRA, LAURA

Elgar Encyclopedia of Global Migration: New Mobilities and Artivism

Edward Elgar Publishing

Año: 2024;

Although citizenship is the quintessence of political emancipation and equality of the modern individual before the law, citizenship rights have been limited since the founding of nation-states. As a result of the established link between citizenship and nationality, international migrations within the framework of nation-states have revealed how nationality affects citizenship. They have also questioned the classic notion of citizenship by triggering reflection on its scope and limits as a tool for social and political inclusion. The exclusionary, segmenting, and hierarchizing features of national citizenship confront one of the basic assumptions of liberal-democratic states: the so-called equality of subjects before self-established law. Viewed from this contradiction, citizenship appears to be a disputed terrain rather than a guaranteed status. On this terrain, it is possible to deploy "citizen practices" for the access to and invention of rights. Another key fact is that the rights guaranteed by citizenship have not been granted but conquered: these are rights that citizens secure for themselves to the extent they exercise them.