Equally recent is the idea that citizenship is related to the abstraction of the state rather than to a specific physical-geographical area. Nowadays, citi- zenship is a multifaceted and layered concept that includes both very concrete as well as very abstract identifications.
First, and concerning concrete aspects of citizenship, it is defined by being an inhabitant of a particular area (city, town, region) by birth. Citizenship is, thus, experienced in a geographical context, and for much of history the
physical environment people identified with is local and, at best, regional. If localities“belonged”to a ruler far away, as was the case in empires, people were not likely to have identified as citizens of that empire. In fact, for most of history people could not fathom a world beyond a 20- to 40-mile radius around their place of residence (Diamond, 2012). In the past two centuries, though, people have been increasingly able to experience citizenship at multiple levels. That is, citizenship is no longer limited to contact with one’s neighbors and townsmen; it may now easily include contact with fellow countrymen (i.e., all citizens within a state) and with like-minded spirits in other countries (Heater, 1990, pp. 318 and 323). Indeed, it is through the power of the social media (Facebook, Twitter) that citizens have come to connect with each other across regions and borders despite efforts of the regimes in power to subdue the uprisings that are collectively known as the Arab Spring (2010–present).
Finally, there are numerous challenges that are truly global by nature and that cannot be addressed successfully by individual territorial states. Just consider global warming and climate change, economic inequalities and poverty, the financial power of multinational corporations, air and water pollution (for instance, the Pacific Trash Vortex that is suspected to be twice the size of the United States; see sprinterlife.com 2012), the international trafficking of women, and so on.
Another way of imaging the multifaceted nature of citizenship is that it can be seen as operating on individual and collective levels (that is, levels of analysis) as well as on organizational and communal/national levels (that is, settings of citizenry action). Microcitizenship concerns employee behavior in the workplace. Midcitizenship emerges out of the action of an organiza- tional group and includes team-building strategies, quality circles, and so forth. Macrocitizenship refers to altruistic behaviors of individuals in national and communal settings. Finally, metacitizenship regards collective action of citizens in the larger society (e.g., voluntary associations) (Vigoda and Golembiewski, 2001, pp. 283–286).
One might expect that a strong sense of citizenship develops when people feel that they are treated well by their public authorities and, more specifically, are satisfied with the quality of public services. However, research has shown that when people are content, their inclination to engage in active political participation and community involvement declines (Vigoda, 2002c, p. 266). Apparently, when all goes well, citizens do not see the need to be involved.
A second, more abstract notion of citizenship is that it presumes a set of duties and rights that can be respectively expected and enjoyed by those who live in a country. As is clear from earlier, for most of history the majority
of people only had duties. However, once they came to be recognized as citizens in a legal sense (i.e., equality before the law), this had to be translated into specific citizen rights. Thomas Marshall (1965, pp. 78–91) distinguished three types of citizen rights. Thefirst to be established were thecivil rightsthat included freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the right to start a business without fear of nationalization. These rights were monitored by the court system. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries people also acquired political rights, such as the right to vote and the right to be voted into office, and this was pursued and supervised by legislatures at the national and subnational levels. Finally, people also were given social rights such as universal health care and education. It is access to education that has especially shored up the notion of citizenship, because through it individuals have been socialized into being citizens. Civics classes and courses in national history and government were aimed at helping people transcend their individual identities (espe- cially elements of identity that were/are grounded in religion, region, language, history, and customs) (Heater, 1990, p. 88).
People still identify with a specific region and country, and they can do so in two ways. They can identify on the basis of territory, as is the case with the French; that is, state-centered ideas of citizenship, building upon centuries of state making and followed relatively late by a sense of nation.
Or they can ground citizenship in a sense of nationhood, as is characteristic for the German lands, where nation (i.e., an organic, cultural, linguistic, and racial community) preceded state by at least two centuries. Either sense of citizenship comes under pressure when original populations clash with mushrooming immigrant populations. This takes us into the third, most abstract notion of citizenship. The education for citizenship briefly described in the previous paragraph is intended to make people open- minded, tolerant, and respectful of others. In a situation where the majority of the population is homogenous, such education is fairly successful.
When nationality and state are closely aligned, immigrants can easily be absorbed into the original population provided their numbers are small. In that situation, citizenship is internally inclusive and externally exclusive (Brubaker, 1992, p. 21).
When internally inclusive it is egalitarian, for providing most inhabitants with the same civil rights while, at the same time, it excludes foreigners. In that casecitizenship is a mechanism for closure,for it assumes and provides for a self- perpetuating community of people. Marshall’s three categories of rights, mentioned earlier, are internally oriented. With increasing international migration since the Second World War, and especially with migration from
developing countries to Western countries (Arnold, 2010), many countries have been moving toward a concept ofpostnational citizenship,where civil and social rights are extended to foreign nationals living in the country. In this case, generally, political rights are not included. This category of citizens is known in the literature as denizens(in the United States: resident aliens).
Finally, there ismulticultural citizenship, which sets specific groups of immi- grants apart as a protected ethnie (these three types of citizenship—closure, postnational, multicultural—are from Gibney and Hansen, 2005, pp. 86–90).
The traditional meaning of citizenship as one that can be equated with national identity is under stress. A variety of countries seek to manage immigration through policies that emphasize the obligation to not only learn the language but also develop a sense of loyalty and belonging to the new country (Kofman, 2005). And several countries pursue integration policies that are presented as inclusive but are intended to achieve exclusion (Goodman, 2009, pp. 183–184). While state may be a rather static phenome- non when territorially defined, nation is sooner culturally defined, and with growing population diversity in countries governments cannot but support cultural pluralism. After all,
Culture and cultures are always influx, and [ . . . ] individuals normally relate to culture through the acknowledgement of multiple affiliations and allegiances, and through participation in diverse practices, customs, and activities, rather than through association with some fixed and determinate culture. [Thus]
. . . states should be maximally accommodating [ . . . ] the cultural variety that free individuals inevitably exhibit.”
(Scheffler, 2007, pp. 105–106) This is easier said than done. The Netherlands is one of those countries where since the mid-1990s assimilation instead of multicultural policies has been pursued. Citizenship policy today should be targeting the develop- ment of a public political culture, where people identify with the state and do not feel forced to abdicate their own culture.