2 - Citizenship and diversity: challenging the conceptual framework

Summary

Introduction

The previous chapter suggested that citizenship refers to a status which brings with it certain rights and duties. At its core, the conceptualisation of citizenship recognises Lewis's (1998: 104) suggestion of three relevant elements of citizenship intimately connected to social welfare provision:

• 1. citizenship provides a way of recognising the link between the state and the individual;

• 2. citizenship implies membership in a community, which in turn highlights inclusion and exclusion criteria; and

• 3. citizenship is a social status that allows people to make a claim against state services.

Furthermore, as noted in the previous chapter, it also incorporates the suggestion by Dean and Melrose (1999) that citizenship has been presented as a ‘totalising’ concept, often gender neutral, essentially universal and ahistorical. Citizenship, especially within the UK context, has developed a particular masculine, White, able-bodied and heterosexual assumption about citizens which obscures the broader diversity of citizens. While this chapter does not seek to be comprehensive in scope, it focuses on the tension between welfare provision and diverse citizens within the UK. As such, attention is given to the implicit, and often explicit, framing of citizenship within social policies, in order to problematise citizen interaction with state support and administration which follows in the later chapters. Complementing sources that contextualise broader philosophical debates (see Faulks, 2000; Lister, 2010, 2020; Dwyer, 2010; Edmiston, 2018), this chapter provides detail on the historical development of citizenship as a concept to underpin subsequent discussion in this book.

As such, this chapter sets out the emergence of imagined communities which have played a central role in the formation of citizenship and the limitations and rearticulations of citizenship which can be drawn out of theorisation and debate regarding citizenship. We give credence to Hoffman's (2004) suggestion that citizenship is a momentum concept: an ever-unfolding and ever-changing term that is reworked towards increasingly progressive ends. Illustrating the benefits of this momentum concept, subsequent chapters in this book draw out research insights across a diverse range of citizens’ engagement with various aspects of the welfare state.