From natural rights to human rights, democratic participation, the relation between the individual and the state.
Readings:
Andrew Heywood, Political Theory: An Introduction, Third Edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), chapter 7, 204-217.
Charles T. Lee, Bare Life, Interstices, and the Third Space of Citizenship, WSO: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Volume 38, Number 1 & 2, 2010, pp. 57-81.
Foundations of the concept of citizenship
In western history, the concept of citizenship is traced to Greek city states where citizenship only belonged to propertied males.
In the contemporary world of politics, it is “founded upon universal rights (citizen claims against the state) and obligations (state claims against the citizens” (Heywood, 184).
Citizenship is based on rights and obligations.
Heywood wants us to consider how the discourse of human rights relates to the question of citizenship in making the distinction between legal and moral rights.
The former is stipulated by law whilst the latter is a moral or philosophical claim (particularly about the idea of the common good).
According to Heywood, “a citizen is a member of a community who is endowed with a set of rights and a set of obligations” (Heywood, p 204).
Citizenship affirms the political being of humans within a society.
1. Citizens’ rights and obligations
Legal rights – four types of legal rights – residual rights
Which rights can be claimed by citizens and non-citizens?
What are the obligations of non-citizens?
Apart from the theme of citizenship, the question of rights is also central to the themes of modern representative democracy and liberalism that we have already covered.
a. Legal rights
Four types of legal rights:
Residual rights: Unspecified rights that remain with the individual or are not explicitly assigned to the government.
i. Privileges or liberty rights
These allow a person to do something they have no obligation not to do i.e., using the highway, beach, park.
ii. Claim rights
They are based on how another person owes another a corresponding duty, i.e., under the principle of atomistic individualism, no person has the right to interfere with the freedom of another.
iii. Legal powers
The legal ability which allows one to do something i.e., right to marry, right to vote.
iv. Immunities
According to which one person can avoid being subject to the power of another” – right not to be drafted into the army.
Apart from these categories of legal rights, you must also look closely at how Heywood looks at the relation between natural rights and legal rights.
The former functions as a condition for the common good – ethical claims.
Human rights (or the unalienable rights of man) on the other hand are universal rights which belong to all human beings – whether citizen or non-citizen.
The discourse of human rights has been complicated by the question of ecological rights.
b. Obligations
Responsibilities and duties (social contract theory and teleological theories - utilitarianism) – coercion and moral duty, obligations determine how one acts, duty to pay taxes or obey laws.
Every individual has the duty or obligation to uphold the rights they are accorded.
There are obligations for the individual and obligations for the state.
The state is obliged to maintain public order and personal security.
What are the grounds upon which obligations (both for the individual and the state) are advanced?
Negative rights – limits or constrains to state power
Positive rights – obligations of the state to provide economic and social welfare
Political obligations – the duty of the citizen to acknowledge the authority of the state and obey its laws.
For the social contract theorists, citizens have an absolute obligation to obey the political authority of the state.
It is the state which is the absolute sovereign due to its ability to resolve conflict.
For Hobbes, the social contract meant absolutism and the state of nature meant anarchy.
For the social contract theorists (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) insist that political obligation is based upon individual choice or voluntary commitment (to an authority).
Heywood proposes what he refers to as teleological theories as an alternative to the analysis of political obligations within the social contract theory.
This entails theories which explain how citizens respect and obey the state on the basis of the benefits or goods they receive from it.
The state is respected on the basis of its ability to guarantee the general will, public interest, or the common good.
This idea is largely supported by utilitarianists.
The state is seen as the most practical expression of community.
2. Elements of citizenship
Social citizenship and active citizenship.
How is citizenship defined as:
A legal status, citizenship as a legal status, citizenship as an identity?
How do we think of the question of citizenship in relation to the issues of migration and immigration?
Citizenship is defined as a legal status and is used to refer to one’s membership in a community.
We have described the conditions (rights and obligations) within which a claim to citizenship is made.
That is, we have looked at citizenship as a legal status rather than an identity.
Citizenship can be viewed as an expression of national identity – link this claim to the theme of the nation and nationalism.
The concept of citizenship is developed with the idea of the nation state in mind.
Unlike non-citizens or aliens, a citizen has the right to live and work in a country – how do we think of this claim in relation to migrants and refugees?
Migrants can only have these rights under certain conditions.
Citizens also have the right to vote, stand for elections, or enter into military service or state service.
Whilst non-citizens may enjoy civil rights (freedom of speech, assembly, or movement), they may not enjoy political rights (the rights to vote, participate in elections, or hold public office).
It is difficult to say whether social rights only belong to citizens.
These include economic welfare and social security (education, healthcare, pension) and obligation to pay taxes.
i. Social citizenship
Claim to positive rights
Emphasis is placed on social rights.
It claims universal equality for all human beings.
What are the rights that allow a member to participate in the economic, political, or social affairs of a community?
In order to fully enjoy their status within a community, citizens must be freed from poverty.
This kind of citizenship is associated with the development of a welfare state, socialist state, or social-democratic state.
Civil rights and social movements advocate for social rights not only political rights.
ii. Universal citizenship and (cultural) diversity or multiculturalism
This principle is founded on the idea of universal humanism (i.e., the idea that all humans possess reason and rationality).
It has also been used to address issues of social and economic inequality like in the discourse of social citizenship above.
It has been used as a discourse to extend civil rights to migrants, women, or ethnic and religious minorities.
But this idea of citizenship is difficult to maintain within a modern pluralistic society where some people may want to maintain their particular identities – between universal identity and particular identity (which can be cultural, ethnic).
The question of cultural diversity has posed a challenge to the question of universal citizenship.
In the postmodernist context within which this idea of multiculturalism is promoted, there has been an emphasis on the need to accommodate difference (racial or ethnic).
Even the issues of migration and immigration, racism and tribalism, or xenophobia have been addressed through the idea of multiculturalism and the doctrine of minority rights.
iii. Immigrants, refugees, minorities and the question of citizenship.
We have seen that there are rights which can be enjoyed by citizens and non-citizens, and there are rights only enjoyed by citizens.
The latter brought us to the questions of universal citizenship and multiculturalism.
Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’ in his text Homo Sacer allows us to think of the status of those without an official status or juridical rights – refugees and unauthorized migrants.
It can be the black during colonial apartheid time in South Africa, slaves during the plantation period, Jews during the holocaust, or immigrants to America and Europe.
Agamben looks at how this process of distinction or totalitarianism operates in a liberal democratic society.
Agamben compares this space to the juridico-political space of the concentration camp.
The status of the refugee or the migrant is interstitial in this case because they occupy the zone between life and death, inside and outside.
Those who follow Agamben are concerned with the form of political subjectivity which develops within this space (how those who enjoy this status navigate the terrain of resistance).