History of citizenship

History of citizenship describes the changing relation between an individual and the state, known as citizenship. Citizenship is generally identified not as an aspect of Eastern civilization but of Western civilization.^[1] There is a general view that citizenship in ancient times was a simpler relation than modern forms of citizenship, although this view has been challenged.^[2]

While there is disagreement about when the relation of citizenship began, many thinkers point to the early

While a general definition of citizenship is membership in a political society or group, citizenship as a concept is difficult to define. Thinkers as far back as Aristotle realized that there was no agreed-upon definition of citizenship.^[4]: p.17 And modern thinkers, as well, agree that the history of citizenship is complex with no single definition predominating.^[5] It is hard to isolate what citizenship means without reference to other terms such as nationalism, civil society, and democracy.^[1] According to one view, citizenship as a subject of study is undergoing transformation, with increased interest while the meaning of the term continues to shift.^[6] There is agreement citizenship is culture-specific: it is a function of each political culture. Further, how citizenship is seen and understood depends on the viewpoint of the person making the determination, such that a person from an upper class background will have a different notion of citizenship than a person from the lower class. The relation of citizenship has not been a fixed or static relation, but constantly changes within each society, and that according to one view, citizenship might "really have worked" only at select periods during certain times, such as when the Athenian politician Solon made reforms in the early Athenian state.^[4] The history of citizenship has sometimes been presented as a stark contrast between ancient citizenship and post-medieval times.^[2] One view is that citizenship should be studied as a long and direct progression throughout Western civilization, beginning from Ancient Greece or perhaps earlier, extending to the present; for example, thinker Feliks Gross examined citizenship as the "history of the continuation of a single institution."^[7] Other views question whether citizenship can be examined as a linear process, growing over time, usually for the better, and see the linear progression approach as an oversimplification possibly leading to incorrect conclusions.^[5] According to this view, citizenship should not be considered as a "progressive realisation of the core meanings that are definitionally built into citizenship."^[5] Another caveat, offered by some thinkers, is to avoid judging citizenship from one era in terms of the standards of another era; according to this view, citizenship should be understood by examining it within the context of a city-state or nation,^[7] and trying to understand it as people from these societies understood it. The rise of citizenship has been studied as an aspect of the development of law.

Table

Contrasting senses of citizenship from ancient times to the present day, according to Peter Zarrow:^[1]

Ancient conceptions

Jewish people in the ancient world

One view is that the beginning of citizenship dates back to the ancient Israelites.^[8] These people developed an understanding of themselves as a distinct and unique people—different from the Egyptians or Babylonians. They had a written history, common language and one-deity-only religion sometimes described as ethical monotheism.^[8] While most peoples developed a loose identity tied to a specific geographic location, the Jewish people kept their common identity despite being physically moved to different lands, such as when they were held captive as slaves in ancient Egypt or Babylon. The Jewish Covenant has been described as a binding agreement not just with a few people or tribal leaders, but between the whole nation of Israel, including men, women and children, with the Jewish deity Yahweh.^[8] Jews, similar to other tribal groups, did not see themselves as citizens per se but they formed a strong attachment to their own group, such that people of different ethnicities were considered as part of an "outgroup".^[9] This is in contrast to the modern understanding of citizenship as a way to accept people of different races and ethnicities under the umbrella of being citizens of a nation.^[9]

Ancient Greece

Polis citizenship

There is more widespread agreement that the first real instances of citizenship began in

To the ancients, citizenship was a bond between a person and the city-state. Before Greek times, a person was generally connected to a tribe or kin-group such as an extended family, but citizenship added a layer to these ties—a non-kinship bond between the person and the state.^{[11]: p.152} Historian Geoffrey Hosking in his 2005 Modern Scholar lecture course suggested that citizenship in ancient Greece arose from an appreciation for the importance of freedom.^[8] Hosking explained:

It can be argued that this growth of slavery was what made Greeks particularly conscious of the value of freedom. After all, any Greek farmer might fall into debt and therefore might become a slave, at almost any time ... When the Greeks fought together, they fought in order to avoid being enslaved by warfare, to avoid being defeated by those who might take them into slavery. And they also arranged their political institutions so as to remain free men.

— Geoffrey Hosking, 2005^[8]

The Greek sense of the polis, in which citizenship and the rule of law prevailed, was an important strategic advantage for the Greeks during their wars with Persia.^[12]

The polis was grounded in nomos, the rule of law, which meant that no man—no matter who he might be—was master, and all men were subject to the same rules. Any leader who set himself above the law was reckoned to be a tyrannos—a tyrant. It was also grounded in the notion of citizenship—the idea that every man born from the blood of the community has a share in power and responsibility. This notion that ... the proper way for us to live is as citizens in communities under the rule of law ... is an idea originated by the Greeks and bequeathed by them as their greatest contribution to the rest of mankind and history. It meant that Greeks were willing to live, fight, and die for their poleis...

— Robert L. Dise, Jr., 2009^[12]

Greeks could see the benefits of having slaves, since their labor permitted slaveowners to have substantial free time, enabling participation in public life.^[8] While Greeks were spread out in many separate city-states, they had many things in common in addition to shared ideas about citizenship: the Mediterranean trading world, kinship ties, the common Greek language, a shared hostility to the so-called non-Greek-speaking or barbarian peoples, belief in the prescience of the oracle at Delphi, and later on the early Olympic Games which involved generally peaceful athletic competitions between city-states.^[8] City-states often feuded with each other; one view was that regular wars were necessary to perpetuate citizenship, since the seized goods and slaves helped make the city-state rich, and that a long peaceful period meant ruin for citizenship.^[13]

An important aspect of

The Greek sense of citizenship may have arisen from military necessity, since a key military formation demanded cohesion and commitment by each particular soldier. The

In a book entitled Constitution of the Athenians, written in 350 BCE, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that ancient Greeks thought that being a citizen was a natural state, according to J. G. A. Pocock.^[4] It was an elitist notion, according to Peter Riesenberg, in which small scale communities had generally similar ideas of how people should behave in society and what constituted appropriate conduct.^[4] Geoffrey Hosking described a possible Athenian logic leading to participatory democracy:

If you've got a lot of soldiers of rather modest means, and you want them to enthusiastically participate in war, then you've got to have a political and economic system which doesn't allow too many of them to fall into debt, because debt ultimately means slavery, and slaves cannot fight in the army. And it needs a political system which gives them a say on matters that concern their lives.

— Geoffrey Hosking, 2005^[8]

As a consequence, the original Athenian aristocratic constitution gradually became more inappropriate, and gave way to a more inclusive arrangement.

Solon expected that aristocratic Athenians would continue running affairs but nevertheless citizens had a "political voice in the Assembly."[16]

Subsequent reformers moved Athens even more towards direct democracy. The Greek reformer Cleisthenes in 508 BCE re-engineered Athenian society from organizations based on family-style groupings, or phratries, to larger mixed structures which combined people from different types of geographic areas—coastal areas and cities, hinterlands, and plains—into the same group.^[8][17] Cleisthenes abolished the tribes by "redistributing their identity so radically" so they ceased to exist.^[8] The result was that farmers, sailors and sheepherders came together in the same political unit, in effect lessening kinship ties as a basis for citizenship.^[18] In this sense, Athenian citizenship extended beyond basic bonds such as ties of family, descent, religion, race, or tribal membership, and reached towards the idea of a civic multiethnic state built on democratic principles.

Cleisthenes took democracy to the masses in a way that Solon didn't. ... Cleisthenes gave these same people the opportunity to participate in a political system in which all citizens—noble and non-noble—were in theory equal, and regardless of where they lived in Attica, could take part in some form of state administration.

— Ian Worthington, 2009^[16]

According to Feliks Gross, such an arrangement can succeed if people from different backgrounds can form constructive associations.^[7] The Athenian practice of ostracism, in which citizens could vote anonymously for a fellow citizen to be expelled from Athens for up to ten years, was seen as a way to pre-emptively remove a possible threat to the state, without having to go through legal proceedings.^[8] It was intended to promote internal harmony.

Athenian citizenship was based on obligations of citizens towards the community rather than rights given to its members. This was not a problem because people had a strong affinity with the polis; their personal destiny and the destiny of the entire community were strongly linked. Also, citizens of the polis saw obligations to the community as an opportunity to be virtuous. It was a source of honour and respect.^[8] According to one view, the citizenry was "its own master".^[2] The people were sovereign; there was no sovereignty outside of the people themselves.^[2] In Athens, citizens were both ruler and ruled. Further, important political and judicial offices were rotated to widen participation and prevent corruption, and all citizens had the right to speak and vote in the political assembly. Pocock explained:

... what makes the citizen the highest order of being is his capacity to rule, and it follows that rule over one's equal is possible only where one's equal rules over one. Therefore the citizen rules and is ruled; citizens join each other in making decisions where each decider respects the authority of the others, and all join in obeying the decisions (now known as "laws") they have made.

— J.G.A. Pocock^[10]

The Athenian conception was that "laws that should govern everybody," in the sense of

This balance of participation, obligations and rights constituted the essence of citizenship, together with the feeling that there was a common interest which imposed its obligations on everyone.

— Geoffrey Hosking, 2005[8]

Hosking noticed that citizenship was "relatively narrowly distributed" and excluded all women, all minors, all slaves, all immigrants, and most colonials, that is, citizens who left their city to start another usually lost their rights from their city-state of origin.^[8] Many historians felt this exclusiveness was a weakness in Athenian society, according to Hosking, but he noted that there were perhaps 50,000 Athenian citizens overall, and that at most, a tenth of these ever took part in an actual assembly at any one time.^[8] Hosking argued that if citizenship had been spread more widely, it would have hurt solidarity.^[8] Pocock expresses a similar sentiment and noted that citizenship requires a certain distance from the day-to-day drudgery of daily living.^[10] Greek males solved this problem to some extent with the subjugation of women as well as the institution of slavery which freed their schedules so they could participate in the assembly. Pocock asked: for citizenship to happen, was it necessary to prevent free people from becoming "too much involved in the world of things"?^[10] Or, could citizenship be extended to working class persons, and if so, what does this mean for the nature of citizenship itself?^[10]

Plato on citizenship

The philosopher Plato envisioned a warrior class similar to the Spartan conception in that these persons did not engage in farming, business, or handicrafts, but their main duty was to prepare for war: to train, to exercise, to train, to exercise, constantly.^{[4]: pp.14–15 [19]} Like the Spartan practice, Plato's idealized community was one of citizens who kept common meals to build common bonds.^{[4]: 14–15} Citizenship status, in Plato's ideal view, was inherited. There were four separate classes.^{[4]: pp.14–15} There were penalties for failing to vote.^[4]: p.15 A key part of citizenship was obeying the law and being "deferent to the social and political system" and having internal self-control.^[4]: 15

Aristotle on citizenship

Writing a generation after Plato, and in contrast with his teacher, Aristotle did not like Sparta's commune-oriented approach.^[4]: p.16 He felt Sparta's land allocation system as well as the communal meals led to a world in which rich and poor were polarized.^[4]: 16 He recognized differences in citizenship patterns based on age: the young were "underdeveloped" citizens, while the elderly were "superannuated" citizens.^[4]: p.17 And he noted that it was hard to classify the citizenship status of some persons, such as resident aliens who still had access to courts, or citizens who had lost their citizenship franchise.^[4]: 17

Still, Aristotle's conception of citizenship was that it was a legally guaranteed role in creating and running government.

To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!

— Aristotle[4]^{: p.17 [20]}

In Aristotle's view, "man is a political animal".

One view was that the Greek sense of citizenship was an "emancipation from the world of things" in which citizens essentially acted upon other citizens; material things were left back in the private domestic world of the oikos.^[10] But the Roman sensibility took into account to a greater extent that citizens could act upon material things as well as other citizens, in the sense of buying or selling property, possessions, titles, goods. Accordingly, citizens often encountered other citizens on the basis of commerce which often required regulation. It introduced a new level of complexity regarding the concept of citizenship. Pocock explained:

The person was defined and represented through his actions upon things; in the course of time, the term property came to mean, first, the defining characteristic of a human or other being; second, the relation which a person had with a thing; and third, the thing defined as the possession of some person.

— J. G. A. Pocock, 1988^[10]

Class concerns

A further departure from the Greek model was that the Roman government pitted the upper-class

Pocock explained that a citizen came to be understood as a person "free to act by law, free to ask and expect the law's protection, a citizen of such and such a legal community, of such and such a legal standing in that community."[10] An example was Saint Paul demanding fair treatment after his arrest by claiming to be a Roman citizen.^[10][26] Many thinkers including Pocock suggested that the Roman conception of citizenship had a greater emphasis than the Greek one of it being a legal relationship with the state,^[4] described as the "legal and political shield of a free person".^[7] And citizenship was believed to have had a "cosmopolitan character".^[1][6] Citizenship meant having rights to have possessions, immunities, expectations, which were "available in many kinds and degrees, available or unavailable to many kinds of person for many kinds of reason."^[10] Citizens could "sue and be sued in certain courts".^[10] And the law, itself, was a kind of bond uniting people, in the sense of it being the results of past decisions by the assembly, such that citizenship came to mean "membership in a community of shared or common law".^[10] According to Pocock, the Roman emphasis on law changed the nature of citizenship: it was more impersonal, universal, multiform, having different degrees and applications.^[10] It included many different types of citizenship: sometimes municipal citizenship, sometimes empire-wide citizenship.^[10]

Law continued to advance as a subject under the Romans. The Romans developed law into a kind of science known as jurisprudence. Law helped protect citizens:

The college of priests agreed to have basic laws inscribed upon twelve stone tablets displayed in the forum for everyone to see ... Inscribing these things on stone tablets was very important because it meant, first of all, that law was stable and permanent; the same for everyone, and it could not be altered at the whim of powerful people. And secondly, it was publicly known; it was not secret; it could be consulted by anybody at any time.

— Geoffrey Hosking, 2005^[24]

Specialists in law found ways to adapt the fixed laws, and to have the common law or jus gentium, work in harmony with natural law or ius naturale, which are rules common to all things.^[24] Property was protected by law, and served as a protection of individuals against the power of the state. In addition, unlike the Greek model where laws were mostly made in the assembly, Roman law was often determined in other places than official government bodies. Rules could originate through court rulings, by looking to past court rulings, by sovereign decrees, and the effect was that the assembly's power became increasingly marginalized.^[10]

Expansion of citizenship

In the Roman Empire, polis citizenship expanded from small scale communities to the entire empire. In the early years of the Roman Republic, citizenship was a prized relationship which was not widely extended. Romans realised that granting citizenship to people from all over the empire legitimized Roman rule over conquered areas. As the centuries went by, citizenship was no longer a status of political agency, but it had been reduced to a judicial safeguard and the expression of rule and law.^[27] The Roman conception of citizenship was relatively more complex and nuanced than the earlier Athenian conception, and it usually did not involve political participation.^[10] There was a "multiplicity of roles" for citizens to play, and this sometimes led to "contradictory obligations".^{[11]: p.165} Roman citizenship was not a single black-and-white category of citizen versus non-citizen, but rather there were more gradations and relationships possible. Women were respected to a greater extent with a secure status as what Hosking terms "subsidiary citizens".^[24]

But the citizenship rules generally had the effect of building loyalty throughout the empire among highly diverse populations.^[6] The Roman statesman Cicero, while encouraging political participation, saw that too much civic activism could have consequences that were possibly dangerous and disruptive.^[2] David Burchell argued that in Cicero's time, there were too many citizens pushing to "enhance their dignitas", and the result of a "political stage" with too many actors all wanting to play a leading role, was discord.^[2][28] The problem of extreme inequality of landed wealth led to a decline in the citizen-soldier arrangement, and was one of many causes leading to the dissolution of the Republic and rule by dictators.^[24] The Roman Empire gradually expanded the inclusiveness of persons considered as "citizens", while the economic power of persons declined, and fewer men wanted to serve in the military.^[2] The granting of citizenship to wide swaths of non-Roman groups diluted its meaning, according to one account.^[2]

Decline of Rome

When the

In the

The early days of medieval communes were marked by intensive citizenship, according to one view.^[4] Sometimes there was terrific religious activism, spurred by fanatics and religious zealotry, and as a result of the discord and religious violence, Europeans learned to value the "dutiful passive citizen" as much preferred to the "self-directed religious zealot", according to another.^[2]

Renaissance Italy

According to historian Andrew C. Fix, Italy in the 14th century was much more urbanized than the rest of Europe, with major populations concentrated in cities like

Fix suggested that of the northern Italian cities, it was Florence which most closely resembled a true Republic,^[32] whereas most Italian cities were "complex oligarchies ruled by groups of rich citizens called patricians, the commercial elite."^[31] Florence's city leaders figured that civic education was crucial to the protection of the Republic, so that citizens and leaders could cope with future unexpected crises.^[31] Politics, previously "shunned as unspiritual", came to be viewed as a "worthy and honorable vocation", and it was expected that most sectors of the public, from the richer commercial classes and patricians, to workers and the lower classes, should participate in public life.^[31] A new sense of citizenship began to emerge based on an "often turbulent internal political life in the towns", according to Fix, with competition among guilds and "much political debate and confrontation".^[31]

Early European towns

During the Renaissance and growth of Europe, medieval political scholar Walter Ullmann suggested that the essence of the transition was from people being subjects of a monarch or lord to being citizens of a city and later to a nation.^{[11]: p.161} A distinguishing characteristic of a city was having its own law, courts, and independent administration.^[33] And being a citizen often meant being subject to the city's law in addition to helping to choose officials.^[33] Cities were defensive entities, and its citizens were persons who were "economically competent to bear arms, to equip and train themselves."^[33] According to one theorist, the requirement that individual citizen-soldiers provide their own equipment for fighting helped to explain why Western cities evolved the concept of citizenship, while Eastern ones generally did not.^[33] And city dwellers who had fought alongside nobles in battles were no longer content with having a subordinate social status, but demanded a greater role in the form of citizenship.^[34] In addition to city administration as a way of participating in political decision-making, membership in guilds was an indirect form of citizenship in that it helped their members succeed financially; guilds exerted considerable political influence in the growing towns.^[35]

Emerging nation-states

During European Middle Ages, citizenship was usually associated with cities.

Citizenship was increasingly seen as a result of birth, that is, a birthright. But nations often welcomed foreigners with vital skills and capabilities, and came to accept these new people under a process of naturalization. Increasing frequency of cases of naturalization helped people see citizenship as a relationship which was freely chosen by people. Citizens were people who voluntarily chose allegiance to the state, who accepted the legal status of citizenship with its rights and responsibilities, who obeyed its laws, who were loyal to the state.^[6]

Great Britain

The early modern period saw significant social change in Great Britain in terms of the position of individuals in society and the growing power of Parliament in relation to the monarch.^[37][38]

The English Reformation ushered in political, constitutional, social and cultural change in the 16th century. Moreover, it defined a national identity for England and slowly, but profoundly, changed people's religious beliefs and established the Church of England.^[39]

In the 17th century, there was

Across Europe, the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries spread new ideas about liberty, reason and politics across the continent and beyond.^[43]

The American Revolution

British colonists across the Atlantic had grown up in a system in which local government was democratic, marked by participation by affluent men, but after the

The French Revolution

The

After 1750, states such as Britain and France invested in massive armies and navies which were so expensive to maintain that the option of hiring mercenary soldiers became less attractive.^[46] Rulers found troops within the public, and taxed the public to pay for these troops, but one account suggested that the military buildup had a side-effect of undermining the military's autonomous political power.^[46] Another view corroborates the idea that military conscription spurred development of a broader role for citizens.^[11]: 153

A phenomenon known as the

In the late-19th century, thinking about citizenship began to influence China. Discussion started of ideas (such as legal limits, definitions of monarchy and the state, parliaments and elections, an active press, public opinion) and of concepts (such as civic virtue, national unity, and social progress).^{[1][need quotation to verify]}

Modern senses

Transitions

The contingent and uneven development of a bundle of rights understood as citizenship in the early nineteenth century was heavily indebted to class conflict played out in struggles over state policy on trade and labor.

— Marc Steinberg, writing in 1996[50]^: 21

Nationalism emerged. Many thinkers suggest that notions of citizenship rights emerged from this spirit of each person identifying strongly with the nation of their birth.^[11]: 137 A modern type of citizenship is one which lets people participate in a number of different ways.^[4] Citizenship is not a "be-all end-all" relation, but only one of many types of relationships which a person might have.^[4] It has been seen as an "equalizing principle" in the sense that most other people have the same status.^[47] One theory sees different types of citizenship emanating out from concentric circles—from the town, to the state, to the world—and that citizenship can be studied by looking at which types of relations people value at any one time.^[4]

The idea that participating in lawmaking is an essential aspect of citizenship continues to be expressed by different thinkers. For example, British journalist and pamphleteer William Cobbett said that the "greatest right", which he called the "right of rights", was having a share in the "making of the laws", and then submitting the laws to the "good of the whole."^[50]

The idea of citizenship, and western senses of government, began to emerge in

The concept of citizenship is hard to isolate, since it relates to many other contextual aspects of society such as the family, military service, the individual, freedom, religion, ideas of right and wrong, ethnicity, and patterns for how a person should behave in society.^[11] According to British politician Douglas Hurd, citizenship is essentially doing good to others.^[51] When there are many different ethnic and religious groups within a nation, citizenship may be the only real bond which unites everybody as equals without discrimination—it is a "broad bond" as one writer described it.^[7] Citizenship links "a person with the state" and gives people a universal identity—as a legal member of a nation—besides their identity based on ties of ethnicity or an ethnic self.^[7]

But clearly there are wide differences between ancient conceptions of citizenship and modern ones. While the modern one still respects the idea of participation in the political process, it is usually done through "elaborate systems of political representation at a distance" such as representative democracy, and carried out under the "shadow of a permanent professional administrative apparatus."^[2] Unlike the ancient patterns, modern citizenship is much more passive; action is delegated to others; citizenship is often a constraint on acting, not an impetus to act.^[2] Nevertheless, citizens are aware of their obligations to authorities, and they are aware that these bonds "limits their personal political autonomy in a quite profound manner".^[2] But there are disagreements that the contrast between ancient and modern versions of citizenship was that sharp; one theorist suggested that the supposedly "modern" aspects of so-called passive citizenship, such as tolerance, respect for others, and simply "minding one's own business", were present in ancient times too.^[2]

Citizenship can be seen as both a status and an ideal.

Other thinkers echo that citizenship is a vortex for competing ideas and currents, sometimes working against each other, sometimes working in harmony. For example,

Citizenship was not always about including everybody, but was also a powerful force to exclude persons at the margins of society, such as the outcasts, illegal immigrants and others.[11]^{: 136–137} In this sense, citizenship was not only about getting rights and entitlements but it was a struggle to "reject claims of entitlement by those initially residing outside the core, and subsequently, of migrant and immigrant labour."^{[11]: 136–137} But one thinker described democratic citizenship as inclusive, generally, and wrote that democratic citizenship:

... (democratic citizenship) extends human, political and civil rights to all inhabitants, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or culture. In a civic state, which is based on the concept of such citizenship, even foreigners are protected by the rule of law."

— Feliks Gross, 1999^[7]

Competing senses

Citizenship in the modern sense is often seen as having two widely divergent strains marked by tension between them.^[55]

Liberal-individualist view

The liberal-individualist conception of citizenship, or sometimes merely the liberal conception, has a concern that the individual's status may be undermined by government. The perspective suggests a language of "needs" and "entitlements" necessary for

The subject of citizenship, including political discussions about what exactly the term describes, can be a battleground for

1. The colonial era was marked by property-owning white males who delegated authority to "gentlemen", and almost all people did not participate as citizens according to his research.[49]^: p.5 Early elections did not generate much interest, were characterized by low voter turnout,^{[49]: p.17 [57]} and rather reflected an existing social hierarchy.^[49]: p.12 Representative assemblies "barely existed" in the 18th century, according to Schudson.^[49]: 13
2. Political parties became prominent in the 19th century to win lucrative patronage jobs, and citizenship meant party loyalty.^{[49]: 5–6}
3. The 20th century citizenship ideal was having an "informed voter", choosing rationally (ie voting) based on information from sources such as newspapers and books.^{[49]: 6–7, 183}
4. Citizenship came to be seen as a basis for rights and entitlements from government. Schudson predicted the emergence of what he called the monitorial citizen: persons engaged in watching for issues such as corruption and government violations of rights.^[49]: 311

Schudson chronicled changing patterns in which citizenship expanded to include formerly disenfranchised groups such as

In the 21st-century America, citizenship is generally considered to be a legal marker recognizing that a person is an American. Duty is generally not part of citizenship. Citizens generally do not see themselves as having a duty to provide assistance to one another, although officeholders are seen as having a duty to the public.^[11]: 171 Rather, citizenship is a bundle of rights which includes being able to get assistance from the federal government. A similar pattern marks the idea of citizenship in many western-style nations. Most Americans do not think much about citizenship except perhaps when applying for a passport and traveling internationally. Feliks Gross sees 20th century America as an "efficient, pluralistic and civic system that extended equal rights to all citizens, irrespective of race, ethnicity and religion."^[7] According to Gross, the US can be considered as a "model of a modern civic and democratic state" although discrimination and prejudice still survive.^[7] The exception, of course, is that persons living within the borders of America illegally see citizenship as a major issue.

Nevertheless, one of the constants is that scholars and thinkers continue to agree that the concept of citizenship is hard to define, and lacks a precise meaning.^{[11]: p.150}

See also

• Citizenship
• Citizenship in the United States
• Cosmopolitanism
• Global citizenship
• Transnational citizenship

Notes