Towards a conceptual framework for citizenship

This chapter aims to provide a conceptual framework for discussing citizenship. It offers a brief account of various dimensions of citizenship that may be used as a guide to understanding the evolution of Western ideas and forms of citizenship, as well as contemporary problems with them. The chapter considers citizenship as a legal status, as an administrative category, as a political practice and as an ideal to be attained. 1 It also considers the sites or domains in which citizenship is or ought to be practised. Each of these dimensions raises questions that citizens, non-citizens and governments have asked over the centuries and that still provoke debate. Nonetheless, the chapter makes no claim to be comprehensive and, for the sake of brevity, its generalizations may not be sufficiently sensitive to the many variations and peculiarities of Western concepts and practices of citizenship.