Abstract
This essay aims to review the contemporary debate on citizenship with a focus on the present dilemma of the institution of citizenship between equality and difference. Citizenship today seems to have become stuck between a categorical commitment to either universalism or particularism. It is as if there is no alternative but to opt for either assimilation (national citizenship) or group fetishism (the end of citizenship). In this essay, however, I argue that citizenship today is not as helpless as it looks. I suggest that rethinking the categories of equality and universality may save modern citizenship from this dilemma between equality and difference. Perceiving equality as equality of differences and not homogenisation and pursuing a contingent notion of universality may, I argue, be of some use in coping with the dilemma in question.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Participation in communal affairs was an inalienable aspect of citizenship in Athens. Citizens were particularly expected to join politics and war. The ideal citizen, ‘a citizen pure and simple’ was, in Aristotle's (1998: 175) terms, ‘defined by nothing else so much as by the right to participate in judicial functions and in office’.
In Christian Joppke's (1998: 25) view, however, Soysal's argument ‘elevates the fringe into the core experience’. Immigration, Joppke argues, ‘touches only the margins of society’, and as such ‘it does not stir up the national order of things’. Moreover, Soysal is wrong, Joppke (1999: 271) maintains, in assuming that national belonging constitutes the source of rights. This, according to Joppke (p. 271), ‘is a fiction, building upon T. H. Marshall's flawed identification of individual rights with citizen rights. Contrary to Marshall's assumption that civil, political and social rights in modern states are all citizen rights, civil and social rights have never been dependent on citizenship. Instead, modern constitutions […] have conceived of civil and social rights as rights of the person residing in the territory of the state, irrespective of her citizenship status’.
An early pioneer of this view, which identifies citizenship with full membership of nation-state-society, was Raymond Aron ([1974] 1994: 279) who ruled out the term multinational citizenship as ‘a contradiction in terms’ a long time ago.
The last of these three proposals is put by Rainer Bauböck (1994a, 1994b). In Bauböck's (1994b: 205–6) view, ‘the basic standard for inclusion in liberal democratic polity is based on a specific notion of society – the outlines of which can be determined by applying the norm of democratic legitimacy to the social instead of the political sphere. From the perspective of individuals, a society in this sense comprises all whose social position durably relates them to a certain state so that they depend on this state for their protection and rights. Seen from the perspective of a state, a society is the basic ensemble of populations permanently affected by its collectively binding decisions’. Such a community would include (p. 206) ‘foreign residents in the territory as well as citizens, and even some foreigners living abroad’. To be brief, what Bauböck (p. 219) proposes is ‘an enrichment of liberal democratic citizenship with transnational elements’.
Derrida's reflections upon hospitality are of import for the politics of citizenship. Suggesting pursuing a politics of hospitality, Derrida (1997b) maintains that ‘hospitality should be neither assimilation, acculturation, nor simply the occupation of my space by the Other. That's why it has to be negotiated at every instant’.
See for instance, Lister (1998).
References
Aristotle (1998) Politics, Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
Aron, R. (1994) ‘Is multinational citizenship possible’, in B.S. Turner and P. Hamilton (eds.) Citizenship. Critical Concepts, Vol. 2. London: Routledge, pp. 279–291.
Bauböck, R. (1994a) Transnational Citizenship: Membership Rights in International Migration, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Bauböck, R. (1994b) ‘Changing the boundaries of citizenship: the inclusion of immigrants in democratic polities’, in R. Bauböck (ed.) From Aliens to Citizens, Aldershot: Avebury, pp. 199–232.
Delanty, G. (2000) Citizenship in a Global Age, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Derrida, J. (1993) ‘Politics and friendship: an interview with Derrida’, in E.A. Kaplan and M. Sprinker (eds.) The Althusserian Legacy, London and New York: Verso, pp. 183–231.
Derrida, J. (1997a) Politics of Friendship, London and New York: Verso.
Derrida, J. (1997b) ‘Politics and friendship: a discussion with Jacques Derrida’, Centre for Modern French Thought, University of Sussex, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/frenchthought/derrida.htm.
Derrida, J. (2000) Of Hospitality, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Falk, R. (1994) ‘The making of global citizenship’, in B. van Steenbergen (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship, London: Sage Publications, pp. 127–140.
Habermas, J. (1994) ‘Citizenship and national identity’, in B. van Steenbergen (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship, London: Sage Publications, pp. 20–36.
Hettne, B. (2000) ‘The fate of citizenship in post-Westphalia’, Citizenship Studies 4 (1): 35–46.
Hutchings, K. and Dannreuther, R. (eds.) (1999) Cosmopolitan Citizenship, London: Macmillan Press.
Isin, E.F. and Wood, P.K. (1999) Citizenship and Identity, London: Sage Publications.
Joppke, C. (1998) ‘Immigration challenges the Nation State’, in C. Joppke (ed.) Challenges to the Nation State, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 5–45.
Joppke, C. (1999) Immigration and the Nation State, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (1995) Multicultural Citizenship, New York: Oxford University Press.
Kymlicka, W. and Norman, W. (1995) ‘Return of the citizen: a survey of recent work on citizenship theory’, in R. Beiner (ed.) Theorising Citizenship, New York: SUNY Press, pp. 283–322.
Laclau, E. (1996) Emancipation(s), London and New York: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2000) ‘Structure, history and the political’, in J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Zizek (eds.) Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London and New York: Verso, pp. 183–212.
Linklater, A. (1998) The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lister, R. (1998) ‘Citizenship and difference: towards a differentiated universalism’, European Journal of Social Theory 1 (1): 71–90.
Malkki, L. (1995) Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mann, M. (1987) ‘Ruling class strategies and citizenship’, Sociology 21 (3): 339–354.
Marshall, T.H. (1965) Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, New York: Anchor Books.
Miller, D. (1999) ‘Bounded citizenship’, in K. Hutchings and R. Dannreuther (eds.) Cosmopolitan Citizenship, London: Macmillan Press, pp. 67–94.
Mouffe, C. (1992a) ‘Democratic citizenship and the political community’, in C. Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy, London: Verso, pp. 225–239.
Mouffe, C. (1992b) ‘Feminism, citizenship and radical democratic politics’, in J. Butler and J.W. Scott (eds.) Feminists Theorize the Political, New York and London: Routledge.
Munch, R. (2001) Nation and Citizenship in the Global Age, New York: Palgrave.
Nisbet, R. (1994) ‘Citizenship: two traditions’, in B.S. Turner and P. Hamilton (eds.) Citizenship. Critical Concepts, Vol. 1. London: Routledge, pp. 7–23.
Pakulski, J. (1997) ‘Cultural citizenship’, Citizenship Studies 1 (1): 73–86.
Philips, A. (1993) Democracy and Difference, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rotblat, J. (ed.) (1997) World Citizenship: Allegiance to Humanity, London: Macmillan Press.
Shapiro, M.J. (2000) ‘National times and other times: re-thinking citizenship’, Cultural Studies 14 (1): 79–98.
Soysal, Y.N. (1994) Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Soysal, Y.N. (1997) ‘Changing citizenship in Europe. Remarks on postnational membership and the national state’, in D. Caserani and M. Fulbrook (eds.) Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, London: Routledge, pp. 17–29.
Soysal, Y.N. (2000) ‘Citizenship and identity: living in diasporas in post-war Europe?’ Ethnic and Racial Studies 23 (1): 1–15.
Tambini, D. (2001) ‘Post-national citizenship’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (2): 195–217.
Touraine, A. (1998) ‘Can we live together, equal and different?’ European Journal of Social Theory 1 (2): 165–178.
Turner, B.S. (1990) ‘Outline of a theory of citizenship’, Sociology 24 (2): 189–217.
Turner, B.S. (1994) Citizenship: Critical Concepts, London: Routledge.
Turner, B.S. (1997) ‘Citizenship studies: a general theory’, Citizenship Studies 1 (1):5–17.
van Steenbergen, B. (1994a) ‘Towards a global ecological citizen’, in B. van Steenbergen (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship, London: Sage Publications, pp. 141–152.
Young, I.M. (1994) ‘Polity and group difference: a critique of the ideal of universal citizenship’, in B.S. Turner and P. Hamilton (eds.) Citizenship: Critical Concepts, Vol. 2. London: Routledge, pp. 386–408.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) ‘Women, citizenship and difference’, Feminist Review, (57):4–27.
Yuval-Davis, N. and Werbner, P. (1999) ‘Introduction’, in N. Yuval-Davis and P. Werbner (eds.) Women, Citizenship and Difference, London and New York: Zed Books, pp. 1–38.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yeğen, M. The Dialectic and the Tragedy of Citizenship. Eur Polit Sci 7, 98–112 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210149
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210149