Citizenship

Introduction

Long a purview of legal and normative political theories, citizenship has made its way in noticeable strides into the discipline of sociology since the 1990s. It has become a focal point in the analysis of a variety of sociological questions, as well as in broader public and policy debates. The conceptual framework of citizenship in the work of T. H. Marshall (see Historical Origins and Trajectories), whether endorsed or critically appraised, constitutes the starting point for much of recent scholarship. Inspired by Marshall, the scholarship shifted away from a purely legal understanding of citizenship to include concerns about social and economic inclusion, and later to questions of belonging and participation. Predominant conceptions of citizenship denote (a) membership in a polity (the nation-state), (b) a set of rights and duties that this membership carries with it, and (c) exercise of rights and obligations, and participation in the polity by members. National citizenship, the rights and duties it entails, and the identity it professes have come under significant duress as a result of the global hegemony of political and economic liberalism, particularly since the collapse of the polarized world system. Much of the new work in the sociology of citizenship has developed in response to these global challenges. While a significant number of studies occupy themselves with the changing individual and collective relationship in the welfare state and in the broader context of human rights, others focus on questions of belonging and participation in a world where nation-state boundaries can no longer be taken for granted. These efforts produced a solid body of scholarship that addresses some of the key questions in sociology while engaging a multidisciplinary field, as reflected in the readings included here.

General Overviews and Readers

Earlier work in this general category attempts to establish the sociological contours of the study of citizenship, often by putting classic pieces side by side with newer ways of thinking and emerging areas of research. Turner and Hamilton 1994 is an example. The collection of papers in van Steenbergen 1994 makes connection to longstanding sociological themes in relation to citizenship. A popular reader, Shafir 1998, sets out the main analytical themes and debates in what is currently practiced as the sociology of citizenship. Isin and Turner 2002 provides a comprehensive view of the wide range of topics addressed by recent citizenship scholarship. Kymlicka and Norman 1994 is an indispensable source for sociologists who wish to familiarize themselves with the terrain of political normative theories that shape much of the debate in the field. Isin, et al. 2008 and Kivisto and Faist 2007 update the field by incorporating new concerns raised in the broader literature. Two recent publications, Bloemraad, et al. 2008 and Joppke 2010, focus on the nexus of immigration and citizenship, insightfully synthesizing a large number of studies on the subject.

Bloemraad, Irene, Anna Korteweg, and Gökçe Yurdakul. 2008. Citizenship and immigration: Multiculturalism, assimilation, and challenges to the nation-state. Annual Review of Sociology 34:153–179.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134608Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Comprehensive review of the recent theoretical, empirical, and methodological developments in the study of the dynamics between citizenship and immigration. The attention to both North American and European literatures and methodological and analytical challenges to the study of immigration and citizenship distinguishes this review article from others.
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Isin, Engin F., Peter Nyers, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. 2008. Citizenship between past and future. London: Routledge.
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A recent collection of contributions from some of the leading scholars of the field, exploring the multifaceted character of contemporary citizenship. Key issues addressed are cosmopolitan norms, identity, territoriality, inclusion, multiculturalism, immigration, and European citizenship. Previously published as an anniversary issue of the journal Citizenship Studies, 11.1 (2007).
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Isin, Engin Fahri, and Bryan S. Turner, eds. 2002. Handbook of citizenship studies. London: SAGE.
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Compared to Turner and Hamilton 1994, this handbook surveys newer topics addressed in citizenship studies. Contains original contributions by prominent sociologists, political scientists, and legal scholars. Topics include the foundations of rights-based citizenship (political, economic, social), political theory approaches (liberal, republican, communitarian), and newer forms of citizenship (sexual, multicultural, indigenous, ecological, postnational, cosmopolitan).
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Joppke, Christian. 2010. Citizenship and immigration. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
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A sophisticated synthesis of the scholarship on citizenship, set in the context of significant social developments such as immigration and universal human rights. Covers a great number of theoretical arguments and empirical findings in a most cogent way. This is the best starting point on the topic for anyone.
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Kivisto, Peter, and Thomas Faist. 2007. Citizenship: Discourse, theory, and transnational prospects. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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A thematically organized survey of citizenship along four themes that the authors see underlining the debates and research in recent scholarship: historical patterns and contemporary modes of inclusion into the rights and community of citizenship; neoliberal erosion of citizenship rights; withdrawal from civic life and participation in the public sphere; and expansion of citizenship as exemplified by increasing modalities of multiple citizenships.
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Kymlicka, Will, and Wayne Norman. 1994. Return of the citizen: A survey of recent work on citizenship theory. Ethics 104:352–381.
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An illuminating review article exploring the revived interest in citizenship studies at the beginning of the 1990s from a political theory perspective. Authors build on distinctions between thick and thin as well as active and passive conceptions of citizenship to engage liberal and communitarian theories and argue for a revision of the notion to account for the increased pluralism of modern societies.
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Shafir, Gershon, ed. 1998. The citizenship debates: A reader. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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An excellent reader (with an analytical introduction by the editor), bringing together pieces by influential scholars in the field to introduce key citizenship topics and debates. The volume is organized around crucial dimensions of citizenship to convey the evolving theory and forms of citizenship in response to major social and political changes.
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Turner, Bryan S., and Peter Hamilton, eds. 1994. Citizenship: Critical concepts. 2 vols. London: Routledge.
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An early, exhaustive reader gathering major texts and sources, from Locke up to the end of the 20th century. Categorized according to topic, each section is introduced with critical commentary by the editors. Sections include theoretical debates, classical texts, historical origins, and connections with welfare, ethnicity, and the state, as well as the feminist critique, inequality, and human-rights challenge to citizenship.
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van Steenbergen, Bart, ed. 1994. The condition of citizenship. London: SAGE.
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One of the early collections shaping the emergent field of citizenship studies, the volume brings together original writings by prominent political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists (e.g. Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Bryan S. Turner) on problems of social inequality, poverty, justice, civil society, ecology, global citizenship, postmodernity, and the city.
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Historical Origins and Trajectories

The earliest formulations of citizenship are discussed in two classical essays. Pocock 1992 reviews Greek and Roman conceptions of citizenship and is helpful for understanding the origins of contemporary debates on communitarian and liberal approaches. Weber 1961 is a classical text that inspired much of the comparative historical work on citizenship. Both Bendix 1977 and Tilly 1990 are sweeping historical studies of social and political change in Europe that gave rise to the modern nation-states and citizenship. While Tilly singles out war and state making, Bendix additionally emphasizes the movements of social protest that led to the establishment of citizenship rights. The landmark study for the recent revival of citizenship in sociology is, however, Marshall 1950, an account of the development and typology of citizenship rights on the basis of his analysis of the British case. The critical historical inquiries of Mann 1987 and Turner 1990 evince contrast to Marshall’s trajectory of rights, showing that the development of citizenship cannot be reduced to a single pattern. Comparative citizenship histories are also provided in Tilly 1996. Janoski 1998 highlights the connection between citizenship rights and duties, an often-neglected aspect in the broad scholarship.

Bendix, Reinhard. 1977. Nation-building and citizenship: Studies of our changing social order. Enlarged ed. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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This is one of the earlier contributions that establish the link between citizenship and nation-state formation. Bendix analyzes the broad shifts in the relationship between subjects and authority, from feudalism to the modern nation-state, which freed individuals from their primordial ties and established a direct link between the state and individuals. First edition, 1964; reprinted 1996.
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Janoski, Thomas. 1998. Citizenship and civil society: A framework of rights and obligations in liberal, traditional, and social democratic regimes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Makes the conceptual connection between citizenship rights and obligations, and shows that historically the expansion patterns of rights and duties across different types of political regimes are highly intertwined.
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Mann, Michael. 1987. Ruling class strategies and citizenship. Sociology 21:339–354.
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One of the first critiques of Marshall’s model as Anglocentric and evolutionary. Based on historical evidence from other industrial societies, Mann draws attention to the importance of strategies of ruling classes and class struggle in the divergent development of citizenship institutions.
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Marshall, T. H. 1950. Citizenship and social class, and other essays. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Seminal text. Based on the British case, theorizes the sequential development of civil, political, and social rights as a process of incorporating new groups into the body of citizenry. Major contribution to the articulation of social citizenship as counterbalance to market forces and ensuing class inequalities. Reprinted in 1992 with a complementary essay by Tom Bottomore.
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Pocock, J. G. A. 1992. The ideal of citizenship since Classical times. Queens Quarterly 99:35–55.
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Sharp comparison between ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of citizenship. Particular focus on Aristotle’s political vision placing citizens in a self-governing community, and the Roman legalist conception emphasizing entitlements and rights. Republished in Shafir 1998 (see General Overviews and Readers).
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Tilly, Charles. 1990. Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1990. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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In this influential book, Tilly addresses the development of the nation-state in Europe and gives an account of citizenship development as state function of war making. The requisites of war and state building (extraction, protection, production, and distribution) are linked to the extension of rights and obligations to previously excluded members of the polity (see particularly chapter 4).
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Tilly, Charles, ed. 1996. Citizenship, identity and social history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Contributors trace particular citizenship histories in countries such as England, the United States, France, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. The editorial introduction is useful for a summary of dissenting notions of citizenship and for conceptual demarcations linked to citizenship in historical perspective.
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Turner, Bryan S. 1990. Outline of a theory of citizenship. Sociology 24:189–217.
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Develops Mann’s critique of Marshall further (Mann 1987). By using the intersection of passive (from above via the state) vs. active (from below via societal participation) and private vs. public dimensions of citizenship, Turner examines different types of political contexts that have influenced the institutionalization of rights. Republished in Turner and Hamilton 1994 (see General Overviews and Readers).
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Weber, Max. 1961. General economic history. Translated by Frank H. Knight. New York: Collier.
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Chapter 28 of this classic text delineates factors that gave rise to modern citizenship in association with Weber’s larger argument concerning the uniqueness of Western rationalization. Crucial are the market aspects of medieval urban social formations, as well as the guild system, as opposed to the military dimension of citizenship in ancient cities. First English edition 1927; republished in Shafir 1998 (see General Overviews and Readers).
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National Closure

Modern citizenship first and foremost denotes membership in a nation-state—a view that is sidelined in Marshall’s conceptualization of citizenship (see Historical Origins and Trajectories). How the boundaries of this membership are defined is of both empirical and normative concern. Brubaker 1992 is a widely influential distinction of civic and ethnic forms of citizenship that has inspired a large body of comparative empirical work. The collection of country cases in Oommen 1997 and Bauböck, et al. 2009 goes far beyond western Europe. Schnapper 1998 and Habermas 1992 contribute to the normative debate on the topic from different ends; Schnapper insists on the coupling of citizenship with national identity, whereas Habermas sees the historical and contingent nature of their relationship. Nothing signifies the idea of citizenship as a national closure more than passport and identity cards. Torpey 2000 cleverly makes the invention and institutionalization of such cards the subject of his research. Carens 1987 and Shachar 2009 make a strong case against closure on the basis of the “inherited” nature of nationalities—although located in political theory debates, their work has relevance as they unearth some of the taken-for-granted assumptions in empirical studies.

Bauböck, Rainer, Bernhard Perchinig, and Wiebke Sievers, eds. 2009. Citizenship policies in the new Europe. Expanded ed. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
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The addition of countries from the former communist block to the “world of modern nation-states” brought into focus their practices in drawing the boundaries of the nation. Useful for thorough description of citizenship policies in new member as well as candidate countries of the European Union (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Turkey, and Cyprus; this edition adds Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia). First edition 2007.
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Brubaker, Rogers. 1992. Citizenship and nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Brubaker’s paradigm setting positioning of citizenship as national closure draws upon a comparative historical account of French and German citizenship laws and policies as having been chiefly determined by their distinct nationhood traditions. Made famous the distinction between the French civic (assimilationist, universalistic, territorially bound) and the German ethnic (ethnocultural, differentialist, blood-based) models of belonging to the polity.
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Carens, Joseph H. 1987. Aliens and citizens: The case for open borders. Review of Politics 49:251–273.
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Prefiguring Shachar 2009, Carens draws similarities between feudal birthright privileges and the inherited and nationally bound status of citizenship in Western liberal democracies, unjustly leading to unequal opportunities. He makes a normative case for open borders from a liberal perspective, based on the argument of the equal worth of individuals.
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Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Citizenship and national identity: Some reflections of the future of Europe. Praxis International 12:1–19.
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Argues for the uncoupling of citizenship from national identity as warranted by their historical and contingent relationship in Europe. Level of argumentation is abstract; readers should be familiar with philosophical and political theories. Republished in van Steenbergen 1994 and in Turner and Hamilton 1994 (see General Overviews and Readers).
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Oommen, T. K., ed. 1997. Citizenship and national identity: From colonialism to globalism. New Delhi: SAGE.
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Contributors explore conceptually and empirically the linkages between citizenship and national identity and their current predicaments brought by developments in the postcolonial and globalized world. Useful for its broad range of empirical cases from Western and “new” Europe to the United States, Japan, India, the African continent, the Middle East, and Portuguese and Spanish Latin America.
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Schnapper, Dominique. 1998. Community of citizens: On the modern idea of nationality. Translated by Séverine Rosée. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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A highly regarded essay from a prominent French scholar, arguing for the primacy of the political bond (citizenship as coterminous with nationality) over economic, cultural, or religious factors in the integration of society—a principle underlying the ideal of the French Republic. Originally published in French in 1994. Preface by Daniel Bell.
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Shachar, Ayelet. 2009. The birthright lottery: Citizenship and global inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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A prominent contribution exploring access to citizenship via attribution rather than acquisition (naturalization). Puts forward the challenging argument that global inequality is structurally enshrined in the principle of birthright citizenship. Innovatively proposes a reconceptualization of citizenship as inherited property (as opposed to arbitrary distribution generated by birth) to inform debates over distributive justice and to ground alternative, more just models of citizenship.
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Torpey, John. 2000. The invention of the passport: Surveillance, citizenship and the state. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Detailed comparative account of states’ control strategies on the freedom of movement of subjects over a two-hundred-year timespan in European and American history. Moves from a Foucauldian perspective linking the creation of passports and identity cards as means of classification and control to the emergence of national citizenship.
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Inclusions and Exclusions of Social Justice

The redefinition of citizenship from a minimum of legal and political rights to a substantive body of social entitlements is what made Marshall 1950 (cited under Historical Origins and Trajectories) a lasting intellectual contribution. Long a topic of interest in the vast literature on the welfare state, social citizenship and its limits in addressing social inequalities have made a significant comeback in sociology. No one else has made as momentous a contribution as Somers 2008 in reviving Marshall’s legacy in American scholarship on citizenship. In European scholarship, Marshall has been much more present, as revealed in Barbalet 1988, Bulmer and Rees 1996, Morris 1994, and Roche 1992. The perennial juxtaposition of social vs. civil rights in US citizenship is addressed in Fraser and Gordon 1994 and Goldberg 2007. The chapters in Bussemaker 1999 explore the changing relationship between citizenship and the welfare state in the context of Europe.

Barbalet, Jack M. 1988. Citizenship: Rights, struggle and class inequality. Milton Keynes, UK: Open Univ. Press.
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Key refinement of Marshall’s model of citizenship development, underlining the importance of the state in the extension and retraction of rights and the persistence of structural class inequalities despite provision of social citizenship rights.
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Bulmer, Martin, and Anthony M. Rees, eds. 1996. Citizenship today: The contemporary relevance of T. H. Marshall. London: UCL Press.
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Collection of essays by prominent scholars critically reassessing Marshall’s contribution to citizenship theory in the light of contemporary social developments. Main focus is on class inequalities, but race and gender are also addressed. Includes newer approaches building on Marshall and involving the impact of globalization and environmentalism on current conceptions of citizenship.
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Bussemaker, Jet, ed. 1999. Citizenship and welfare state reform in Europe. London: Routledge.
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The papers in this volume explore theoretically and empirically the relationship between citizenship and social policy in the light of profound changes affecting welfare states around western Europe at the end of the 20th century. The country cases include France, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, and, at the supranational level, the EU.
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Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. 1994. Civil citizenship against social citizenship? In The condition of citizenship. Edited by Bart van Steenbergen, 90–107. London: SAGE.
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Explores the historical distinction made in the United States between civil citizenship (understood positively, as a “contract” between citizens and states) and social citizenship (understood negatively, as “charity”) and their apparent contradiction. Makes a compelling contra-Marshall argument that a strongly rooted civil rights tradition may hinder rather than facilitate the development of social citizenship. Earlier version published in Socialist Review 22 (1992).
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Goldberg, Chad Alan. 2007. Citizens and paupers: Relief, rights, and race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to workfare. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Based on a historical comparison of three major US social welfare policies over the last two centuries, the book seeks to explain the highly contested nature of the American approach to social citizenship. Analytically drawing on Foucault and Bourdieu, Goldberg suggests that classification practices granting either “honorific” or “degrading” welfare provisions have fostered exclusion from the full status and rights of citizenship chiefly along racial lines.
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Morris, Lydia. 1994. Dangerous classes: The underclass and social citizenship. London: Routledge.
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A critical examination of the impact of historically enduring constructions of “the underclass” (reflected in distinctions between deserving and undeserving poor) on notions of social citizenship in British and American contexts.
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Roche, Maurice. 1992. Rethinking citizenship: Welfare, ideology, and change in modern society. Cambridge, MA: Polity.
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Extending from Marshall and echoing Morris 1994, Roche overviews the dominant paradigms of social citizenship in the United States, Britain, and Europe. Particular attention is given to the changes since the 1980s with the shift from postwar politics of social rights to a new politics of social obligations and personal responsibility.
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Somers, Margaret R. 2008. Genealogies of citizenship: Markets, statelessness, and the right to have rights. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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In this impressive book, bringing together her ideas about the state, market, and civil society, Somers provides a genealogical history of Anglo-American citizenship theory. Her chief concern is the threat to socially inclusive citizenship brought by the rise of market fundamentalism. She makes a strong argument against it by sifting expertly through the works of Polanyi, Arendt, and Marshall.
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Gendered Citizenship

Since 1990, feminist scholars have effectively exposed the gender-blind nature of citizenship regimes and studies. Lister 1997, by one of the eminent sociologists in the field, recasts the theoretical and policy issues in citizenship field from a gender perspective. Yuval-Davis 1997 engages Turner’s typology of citizenship (Turner 1990, cited under Historical Origins and Trajectories) to develop a feminist critique. Pateman 1988 is a classic feminist treatment of the gendered position of citizens vis-à-vis the welfare state. Following the same line, a highly influential article, Orloff 1993, broadly sets the analytical agenda for the study of welfare provisions from a feminist perspective. Empirical studies have been equally crucial in remedying the accounts of citizenship that omit the formative role of women and their movements in the historic progress of citizenship (Glenn 2002 and Skocpol 1992). The analyses of Glenn 2002 and Parreñas 2001 add race and immigration as intervening factors. Ramirez, et al. 1997 is a rare quantitative cross-national study on the development of women’s political citizenship.

Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2002. Unequal freedom: How race and gender shaped American citizenship and labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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A rich historical sociology of American citizenship, detailing the struggle for the inclusion of women and people of color. Empirical analysis casts light on African Americans in the South, Mexican Americans in the Southwest, and Asian Americans in Hawaii during a period of great social, industrial, and colonial transformations, 1870–1930.
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Lister, Ruth. 1997. Citizenship: Feminist perspectives. London: Macmillan.
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A stimulating engagement with citizenship theory and praxis. The book examines key themes in the field, such as inclusion vs. exclusion and equality vs. difference, through a gender-sensitive lens and with a sustained focus on women’s agency. Second edition, 2003.
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Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. Gender and the social rights of citizenship: The comparative analysis of gender relations and welfare states. American Sociological Review 58:303–328.
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Orloff’s critique uncovers the male-centeredness of traditional conceptualizations of welfare as a decommodification strategy opposing citizens and markets. An exceptionally rich conceptual article, it proposes a revised analytical framework for the study of welfare provisions that effectively takes gendered relations of power into consideration.
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Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2001. Transgressing the nation-state: The partial citizenship and “imagined (global) community” of migrant Filipina domestic workers. Signs 26:1129–1154.
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Based on a case study of Filipina low-wage domestic workers in industrialized countries, the article argues that globalization creates the structural conditions for the existence of what could be termed “partial citizenship”—a position in which women migrants are denied full rights in both their home and their host countries.
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Pateman, Carole. 1988. The patriarchal welfare state. In Democracy and the welfare state. Edited by Amy Gutmann, 231–260. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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One of the earliest feminist interventions that theoretically explores the links between work, masculinity, and citizenship and deconstructs the gendered public vs. private divide. The patriarchal relegation of welfare to the private realm as women’s contribution to citizenship, as opposed to men’s contribution in the form of workfare, is challenged from a feminist standpoint.
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Ramirez, Francisco O., Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal, and Suzanne Shanahan. 1997. The changing logic of political citizenship: Cross-national acquisition of women’s suffrage rights, 1890 to 1990. American Sociological Review 62:735–745.
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A cross-national and longitudinal analysis of the timing of the extension of voting rights to women. Sets the movements and legislation for women’s suffrage rights in an international framework, arguing that their success was increasingly a product of the broader international institutional environment rather than of local or national forces.
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Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
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Although not specifically focused on citizenship, this influential contribution to the history of welfare in the United States emphasizes, inter alia, the agency of women’s voluntary organizations in the shaping of social policies in several American states at the beginning of the 20th century, long before women’s right to vote was passed.
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Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Women, citizenship and difference. Feminist Review 57:4–27.
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Starting from a critique of Turner’s typology (Turner 1990, cited under Historical Origins and Trajectories) of contexts for the institutionalization of rights as being gender blind and “Westocentric,” Yuval-Davis argues for superseding the highly gendered public vs. private divide in citizenship theorizing and for a multitiered concept of citizenship no longer intrinsically tied to the nation-state.
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Immigration Challenge

Immigration provides a productive analytical entry to the study of citizenship because it challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions about its nationally delimited boundaries. Studies in this research field are deliberatively comparative, juxtaposing divergent state strategies of incorporating immigrants while revealing the contours of citizenship models and practices. Hammar 1990 is an early contribution along these lines, but Favell 2001 and Jopkke 1999 are masterful examples here. Bloemraad 2006 is a skillful comparison of the United States and Canada, adding a control for immigrant groups themselves as a possible source of explanation for incorporation outcomes. The collections Cesarani and Fulbrook 1996, Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2000, and Aleinikof and Klusmeyer 2001 cover a wide range of countries. Howard 2009 brings the politics of immigrants’ citizenship into discussion.

Aleinikoff, T. Alexander, and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. 2000. From migrants to citizens: Membership in a changing world. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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A good overview of concrete rules and policies by which states administer immigration and citizenship, juxtaposing traditional and newly emerging immigration countries (Australia, the Baltic states, Canada, European Union countries, Israel, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Japan, and the United States). Followed by Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2001.
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Aleinikoff, T. Alexander, and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. 2001. Citizenship today: Global perspectives and practices. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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The second volume of the series from the Carnegie Endowment, following Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2000, offers a look into the central trends in citizenship policy, and redefinitions of concepts and practice. Notable contributions by Rainer Bauböck, Linda Bosniak, Adrian Favell, Christian Joppke, and Patrick Weil.
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Bloemraad, Irene. 2006. Becoming a citizen: Incorporating immigrants and refugees in the United States and Canada. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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An empirically rich sociological study of naturalization policies, the book compares citizenship acquisition and political incorporation of immigrants in American and Canadian institutional settings (with a focus on Portuguese and Vietnamese communities). It finds that Canada’s explicitly multicultural approach has yielded better immigrant incorporation than the US approach.
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Cesarani, David, and Mary Fulbrook, eds. 1996. Citizenship, nationality, and migration in Europe. London: Routledge.
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A popular collection of original contributions by prominent sociologists, historians, and lawyers addressing the interconnection between ideas of nation, modes of citizenship, and the treatment of migrants. Some chapters discuss the historical context and contemporary changes in Europe, while others address one of the four case studies (Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy), with a particular focus on the politicization of immigration and citizenship.
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Favell, Adrian. 2001. Philosophies of integration: Immigration and the idea of citizenship in France and Britain. 2d ed. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
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This highly regarded and widely read book traces the genealogies of distinct ideas and policy arguments that shaped path-dependent integration strategies: an ideal of secular civic republicanism in France and a myth of utilitarian multiethnic race relations in the United Kingdom. The possibility of transcending these nation-bound ideals in the present EU context is explored. First edition, 1998.
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Hammar, Tomas. 1990. Democracy and the nation state: Aliens, denizens, and citizens in a world of international migration. Aldershot, UK: Avebury.
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An early contribution focused on western Europe that discusses the extension of some citizenship rights to labor migrants and long-term residents (such as civil, economic, and certain social rights), in the absence of full political rights and formal citizenship status. Important for coining the term “denizen” to reflect this condition.
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Howard, Marc Morjé. 2009. The politics of citizenship in Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A relatively new addition, this is a detailed comparative study analyzing why some European states have recently liberalized their citizenship laws while others have not. Colonial legacies and party politics are Howard’s answer. Attention to politics and skillful combination of case studies with a cross-national quantitative analysis sets this book apart from others.
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Joppke, Christian. 1999. Immigration and the nation-state: The United States, Germany, and Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Lucidly written, this book examines postwar developments in immigration, citizenship, and the nation-state, comparing three Western liberal democracies. Joppke argues that the nation-state is still the main locus of control for immigration and citizenship, despite critics pointing out otherwise (see Beyond National).
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Diversity Challenge

How does citizenship’s claim to universal inclusion and equal rights and duties stand vis-à-vis the reality of societal and cultural diversity? Modes of incorporation of divergent societal groups and cultural minorities, the tension between individual and group rights, and the multicultural challenge to civic bonds have been the subjects of both normative and empirical work. Though engaging political theory, Young 1989 and Kymlicka 1995 are frequently referred to in sociological debates on the tension between universal rights and special (or differentiated) rights. Skrentny 2002 is an impressive history and analysis of the US “minority rights revolution,” challenging the role of minorities themselves in the process. Modood, et al. 2006 takes on the specific case of Muslims in Europe in addressing multicultural challenges to citizenship. While Joppke 2004 traces the decline of multicultural policies, Koopmans, et al. 2005 shifts the focus to the contentious politics of multiculturalism.

Joppke, Christian. 2004. The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: Theory and policy. British Journal of Sociology 55:237–257.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00017.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the decline of multiculturalism yet the continuing rise of antidiscrimination policies. The focus is on Australia, the Netherlands, and Britain. However, the arguments apply broadly, particularly the role of the increasing dominance of individual-based liberal ideologies in the West in contextualizing this shift.
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Koopmans, Ruud, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni, and Florence Passy. 2005. Contested citizenship: Immigration and cultural diversity in Europe. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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A central contribution of the book is the introduction of an index of national citizenship regimes using multidimensional empirical indicators that go beyond conventional ethnic vs. civic categorizations. The index is used to explain the variations in the way that immigration and cultural diversity have become a contentious issue in Europe since the 1990s, by comparing collective actions by migrants, xenophobes, and antiracists in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
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Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural citizenship: A liberal theory of minority rights. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Though wedded to the Canadian experience, Kymlicka is one of the most sociologically informed political theorists. Now a classic, this book makes the compelling case for cultural rights as a constitutive part of citizenship. Kymlicka’s analysis is careful in differentiating between polyethnic cultural rights of immigrants that can be accommodated in a united citizenry, and the self-determination rights of national minorities and indigenous groups.
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Modood, Tariq, Anna Triandafyllidou, and Ricard Zapata-Barrero, eds. 2006. Multiculturalism, Muslims and citizenship: A European approach. New York: Routledge.
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This collection reviews contentious multicultural affairs and policy encounters in different European countries, particularly as they relate to Muslim populations. Forwards the argument that secular self-images and institutions of European nation-states invite different multicultural dilemmas and policy options than do the dominant North American paradigms and practices.
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Skrentny, John David. 2002. The minority rights revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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An first and celebrated cultural and historical analysis of civil rights and affirmative action developments of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. Relying on rich archival material and interviews, Skrentny shows the importance of political elites’ strategic and contextual role, as well as the broader world consensus on equal rights in the aftermath of World War II, in the expansion of minority rights.
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Young, Iris Marion. 1989. Polity and group difference: A critique of the ideal of universal citizenship. Ethics 99:250–274.
DOI: 10.1086/293065Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Influential critique of universalist notions of citizenship grounded in a feminist “differentialist” perspective. Young calls for democratic representation and differentiated recognition of all disadvantaged groups of citizens, not only ethnic and racial, but also gender, age, sexuality, and ability based, as well as economically disadvantaged. Republished in Shafir 1998 (see General Overviews and Readers).
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Claims Making and Participation in Public Sphere

Reconceptualizing the Marshallian concept of citizenship as a more dynamic and relational one, a significant line of scholarship pursues citizen participation and claims making as its subject.

Participation and Civicness

The incisive revisit by Somers 1993 to 18th-century English working communities reveals the public sphere and associational life as key sites for citizenship practices. The famous intervention on the decline of American associational life and civic participation by Putnam 2000 has generated much debate. Fifteen years before Putnam, Bellah, et al. 1985 had voiced similar concerns by asking “Are Americans still citizens?” Others observe more vibrancy in citizens’ participation, as Amenta 2008 and Norris 2001 attest. Holston 2008 and Yashar 2005, reporting on research on Latin America, support the same view.

Amenta, Edwin. 2008. When movements matter: The Townsend Plan and the rise of social security. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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This well-written book analyzes the rise and fall of the Townsend Plan, a social movement of predominantly elderly citizens at the beginning of the New Deal. Makes a strong case for unanticipated consequences; movements can matter, and their ideals may flourish, even when their stated goals are never enacted.
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Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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This collaborative work remains the most discussed interpretation of American society (citizenship is addressed in chapter 8). American individualism enshrined in the quest for personal success is portrayed as an impediment to political participation. Drawing theoretically from Toqueville, the authors advance a civic communitarian solution: re-empowering citizens through associative life and involvement in the community. Subsequent editions in 1996 and 2008.
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Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Rich ethnographic study demonstrating the emergence of the city as a site for citizens’ democratic struggles for basic rights within the historically inclusive, yet profoundly unequal, Brazilian citizenship model. Relies on data from São Paulo suburbs, where local residents’ mobilizations to resolve conflicts over land and housing arrangements brought about the appearance of new forms of participation involving a contentious relationship with the law.
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Norris, Pippa. 2001. Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Norris’s extensive empirical study of the use of Internet resources provides an antidote to Putnam’s pessimistic view on the decline of civic participation. She argues that the Internet provides new opportunities to engage and participate in public life, even when a democratic divide emerges between those who use and who do not use the Internet.
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Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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A frequently cited contribution on the evolution of American citizens’ civic involvement that sparked debates about the weakening of US democracy. The book emphasizes the relevance of social capital (a network of social connections that generate trust) in citizens’ participation and reflects the renewed interest in communitarian approaches to citizenship studies. The thesis expressed in the book was previously published in Journal of Democracy 6 (1995):65–78.
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Somers, Margaret R. 1993. Citizenship and the place of the public sphere: Law, community, and political culture in the transition to democracy. American Sociological Review 58:587–620.
DOI: 10.2307/2096277Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reexamines Marshall’s thesis (Marshall 1950, cited under Historical Origins and Trajectories) by revisiting the historical case of 18th-century English working communities. Stresses the importance of legal infrastructures, community associational life, and patterns of political culture in the development of democratic citizenship rights. The public sphere, not the market, emerges as the key site of citizenship making.
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Yashar, Deborah. 2005. Contesting citizenship in Latin America: The rise of indigenous movements and the postliberal challenge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511790966Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important analysis of indigenous mobilization in Latin America, with detailed case studies from Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru. Rich in historical comparative material, the book uses the notion of “citizenship regimes” as an analytic tool to explain uneven indigenous movements across different states. Social networks and political associational spaces are presented as key opportunity structures for citizen participation.
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Claims Making

Sassen 2002 and Soysal 1997 point to new sites and forms of citizens’ claims making, while Koopmans and Statham 1999 concludes that national frames of political participation still largely determine citizenship practices. Plummer 2003 and Rose and Novas 2005 expand their analyses to new citizenship claims that were long considered to belong to the private sphere.

Koopmans, Ruud, and Paul Statham. 1999. Challenging the liberal nation-state? Postnationalism, multiculturalism, and the collective claims making of migrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Germany. American Journal of Sociology 105:652–696.
DOI: 10.1086/210357Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An extensive content analysis of newspaper articles related to immigrant collective mobilization in two western European liberal nation-states. Contrary to Soysal 1997’s and Sassen 2002’s arguments on the same theme, the authors maintain that national frames of political participation still largely override claims making that is grounded in international or global discourses.
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Plummer, Kenneth. 2003. Intimate citizenship: Private decisions and public dialogues. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press.
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Building on notions of “feminist citizenship” and “sexual citizenship,” this fresh approach seeks to set the agenda of debate for an emergent strand of claims making coming from the intimate sphere. Based on the observation of overlapping boundaries between private and public domains of intimacy, the citizenship issues raised revolve around identities and negotiation, rather than rights or obligations.
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Rose, Nikolas, and Carlos Novas. 2005. Biological citizenship. In Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier, 439–463. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Rose’s contribution to Foucauldian sociology is widely known. This collaborative study seeks to examine the role of current advances in genomics, biomedicine, and biotechnologies in the reshaping of identities and citizenship practices, such as associative life and claims making, in the Western world, where “regimes of the self” increasingly guide the choices of individuals over their bodies.
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Sassen, Saskia. 2002. The repositioning of citizenship: Emergent subjects and spaces for politics. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 46:4–26.
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Sassen’s influential work on globalization signals shifts in forms of politics and participation. In this article, summarizing her views on the subject, she argues that it is no longer the nation-state but today’s global city that offers a strategic site for new practices of citizenship, a space reclaimed by disadvantaged groups and actors.
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Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoğlu. 1997. Changing parameters of citizenship and claims-making: Organized Islam in European public spheres. Theory and Society 26:509–527.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006886630358Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines Muslim associational activity and claims making in Britain, France, and Germany to lend support to the thesis of changing patterns of citizenship and participation in Europe. The emergence of new forms of participation relies on claims grounded in universalistic individual rights, even when furthering particularistic identity demands, supported by globally institutionalized human rights jurisdiction rather than being exclusively tied to a national collectivity.
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Beyond National

A productive strand of theory and research addresses transformations of national citizenship in an era of globalization. Empirically, the work in this field engages such developments as the world-level institutionalization of human rights regimes, international labor migrations and transnational connectivities, and regional and global governance bodies such as the European Union and international courts. Soysal 1994 on postnational citizenship inspired a prolific debate and research on whether citizenship is bound by distinct national contexts, or whether global and transnational factors penetrate to recast citizenship institutions and practices. Bauböck 1994 and Jacobson 1996 both focus on the impact of transnational migrations on citizenship; Bauböck considers the changes positive, but Jacobson sees them as a devaluation of citizenship. Bosniak 2006 and Sassen 2006 offer the concept of denationalization to depict the process by which “the global” manifests itself within what has been historically constituted as national. Ong 1999 accentuates the conditions of global political economy that have created flexible citizens who find markets and homes in multiple locales. The collection of papers in Faist and Kivisto 2007 examines the tension between the growing liberalization of citizenship laws (as exemplified in dual or multiple citizenships) and increasing securitization of citizenship (through stricter immigration policies). Habermas 2001 and Balibar 2004 approach European citizenship from diverging views; Habermas sees the potential in the EU to move toward a cosmopolitan democracy, while Balibar warns against the lurking racism and discrimination within the EU’s borders.

Balibar, Etienne. 2004. We, the people of Europe? Reflections on transnational citizenship. Translated by James Swenson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Collection of essays summing up the prominent political philosopher’s views on European citizenship. Argues that borders are not simply situated at the outer limit of the European Union; new borders are emerging within Europe, where immigrant communities are discriminated against on the basis of their race and nationality, indicative of the very contradictions of the European citizenship project. Originally published in French in 2001.
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Bauböck, Rainer. 1994. Transnational citizenship: Membership and rights in international migration. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
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By examining changing principles of rights allocation in the context of regional integration, mass migration, and the development of transnational organizations, this book concludes that transnational citizenship is the liberal response to questions of equality and inclusiveness in a globalizing world.
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Bosniak, Linda. 2006. The citizen and the alien: Dilemmas of contemporary membership. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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Written with remarkable clarity by one of the foremost legal scholars in the field, this book focuses on the ambiguous status of noncitizen immigrants in the United States and other liberal democratic states, as members and outsiders simultaneously. Bosniak furthers the idea that the category of alienage at once reveals the limits of citizenship’s claimed universality and its restructuring by global processes right “at the heart of national societies.”
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Faist, Thomas, and Peter Kivisto, eds. 2007. Dual citizenship in global perspective: From unitary to multiple citizenship. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
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This edited volume broadly explores the implications of the growing liberalization of dual and multiple citizenships for security, sovereignty, and nationhood. A balancing view to the changing citizenship thesis is offered with the observation that transnational security and loyalty questions reinforce prerogatives of states over membership in the political community.
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Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The postnational constellation: Political essays. Edited, translated, and introduced by Max Pensky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Habermas, one of the most influential philosophers of today, has been writing in recent years about the new political configurations beyond the nation-state. In this collection of previously published essays, he contemplates a European federation based on democratic social rights that would regulate the negative effects of globalization and provide cosmopolitan solidarity and the public sphere. Originally published in German in 1998.
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Jacobson, David. 1996. Rights across borders: Immigration and the decline of citizenship. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
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Jacobson discusses how citizenship is devalued in the face of the extension of rights to noncitizens, and how national sovereignty is undermined by supranational legal and judicial processes. The empirical focus is on the treatment of illegal immigration as reflected in the interplay between international human rights laws and national political cultures, while the case studies considered are from the United States, Germany, and France.
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Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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This compelling contribution from anthropology coins the term “flexible citizenship” to describe the fluid and opportunistic engagements of transnational (Chinese) business elites in response to global capitalism. This phenomenon is paralleled by similar strategies developed by Southeast Asian governments through the exercise of “graduated sovereignty” by exerting differentiated levels of control and authority over particular groups of citizens.
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Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, authority, rights: From medieval to global assemblages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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An extended version of some of her previously published arguments, this book by one of the prominent sociologists of globalization offers a third response to the current predicament of citizenship that is neither national (as in Brubaker 1992, cited under National Closure) nor postnational (as in Soysal 1994). Sassen suggests (in chapter 6) considering citizenship as “denationalised,” acknowledging that the nature of the national itself has changed rather than having endured or been superseded.
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Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoğlu. 1994. Limits of citizenship: Migrants and postnational membership in Europe. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Empirically grounded in a comparison of six western European states’ citizenship institutions and immigrant policies, this widely discussed book shows that while nation-states and their boundaries persist as reasserted by sovereignty narratives, restrictive immigration policies, and differentiated access schemes, paradoxically, universalistic personhood rights transcend the same boundaries, giving rise to new models and understandings of citizenship.
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Rights and Human Rights

In the aftermath of World War II, human rights regimes expanded globally. An emerging scholarship on the sociology of rights brings into focus the relationship between national citizenship and universal human rights. The seminal contribution of Arendt 1951 is fundamental to this scholarship. Somers and Roberts 2008 and Morris 2006 are attempts to shape the foundations and boundaries of this new field of theory and research. Benhabib 2004’s sociologically grounded political theory refuses the dichotomy of universalism and particularism in rights. Shafir and Brysk 2006 points to the historical affinity between the trajectory of human and citizenship rights. The careful empirical treatment in Nash 2009 reveals the inconsistencies and hazards in the application of international human rights norms in national contexts.

Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
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Arendt’s notion of the “right to have rights” in the context of statelessness has been highly influential in citizenship scholarship. Scholars draw upon Arendt’s challenge to universal rights to elucidate the tension between cosmopolitan norms of equal treatment versus realization of equality being embedded within particular communities. The second updated edition published in 1958 includes the 1956 events from Hungary.
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Benhabib, Seyla. 2004. The rights of others: Aliens, residents and citizens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511790799Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This invigorating book revisits Kant and Arendt to articulate the “root paradox” of liberal democracies: the tension between universal human rights and national sovereignty claims—a tension exacerbated and unavoidable in a globalized world of migrations. Benhabib draws upon sociological insights and democratic theory to argue against the myth of a culturally unified demos and for a dynamic conceptualization of citizenship open to democratic reiterations and struggle.
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Morris, Lydia, ed. 2006. Rights: Sociological perspectives. London: Routledge.
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An eclectic volume focused on human rights and citizenship rights. Contributors explore possibilities for a new field of sociology of rights from various sociological vantage points (economic, feminist, interpretive, and conflict sociology). Substantive topics range from different aspects of welfare, such as old age and health care, to group rights, such as sexual rights and indigenous people’s rights, and legal clashes over various civil freedoms.
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Nash, Kate. 2009. The cultural politics of human rights: Comparing the US and UK. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511576676Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A timely intervention, this book emphasizes the key role of culture and plurality of meanings in the shaping of international human rights practices at the state level by analyzing selected UK and US court cases. It explores the limits of a “cosmopolitan state” under the aegis of international human rights activism standing in tension with national frames of justice, nationalism, and national citizenship.
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Shafir, Gershon, and Alison Brysk. 2006. The globalization of rights: From citizenship to human rights. Citizenship Studies 10:275–287.
DOI: 10.1080/13621020600772073Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article draws a parallel between the movement for international human rights and the evolution of traditional citizenship rights along three main axes: transfer of political sovereignty, extension of rights to previously excluded groups, and expansion of the range of rights covered.
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Somers, Margaret R., and Christopher N. J. Roberts. 2008. Toward a new sociology of rights: A genealogy of “buried bodies” of citizenship and human rights. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4:385–425.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805.105847Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An overview of the theoretical and historical reasons why a sociology of rights and of human rights had not emerged in America despite extensive political struggles and academic attention paid to rights. Arendt’s notion of a “right to have rights” (Arendt 1951) is revisited and reconceptualized as the core of the nexus of citizenship rights and human rights.
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