Values and meanings of citizenship

What does citizenship mean to poor and socially excluded people? How do their views help us understand and analyse what 'inclusive' citizenship means?

The history of citizenship is largely of struggle over how it is defined and who is included. Today, the views of 'ordinary' citizens are absent in theoretical debates. The Citizenship DRC worked with local community groups in Brazil, Britain, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru and South Africa to examine what citizenship means to people, particularly those whose status as citizens is either non-existent (because the government refuses to recognise their rights) or extremely uncertain.

Findings show that experiences of citizenship vary by context and the nature of exclusion, but there are common values. Although not universal, these values are widespread enough to suggest that they are a significant aspect of how people connect with each other and organise themselves collectively.

People living in illegal housing settlements (favelas) in Brazil, landless women in Bangladesh, indigenous groups in Mexico and housing tenants in Kenya have all experienced exclusion in some form. Their vision of a more inclusive society includes the following values: justice, recognition, self-determination and solidarity.

Justice

This is about when it is fair to treat people the same and when it is fair to treat them differently. For example, citizens in Nigeria prioritised ethnicity as the basis for their identity and primary affiliation. But they expected the state and its representatives to act fairly and impartially to all citizens and protested when citizens were discriminated against on the grounds of ethnicity.

Recognition

This refers to people's right as human beings to be recognised, whether their identity or culture conforms to dominant expectations or not. The 'right to have rights' was at the heart of the Zapatista struggle in Mexico, when indigenous people demanded the right to be different from mainstream society. Dignity and respect are essential to the idea of citizenship in the less visible and more daily moments of life. In Brazil's favelas, people experienced a lack of citizenship by having no dignity in their everyday interactions with others because of negative stereotyping in wider society.

Self-determination

People's ability to exercise some degree of control over their lives is self-determination. The struggle for rights is expressed in ways that reflect the experiences of people who have been denied self-determination. Naripokkho, a Bangladeshi organisation works with women and their right to self-determination. They challenge gender inequality in access to resources such as education, property, jobs and health care. They also challenge patriarchal power exercised through various forms of control over women's bodies.

Solidarity

This is the capacity to identify with other people and to act in unity with them for justice and recognition. This takes various forms, based on the included or excluded status of individuals and groups. It depends on the extent to which people hope to overcome their excluded status. For those who do not have much hope or experience of solidarity, this is limited to daily struggles in the community, to family or next of kin. In South Africa, for example, an elderly black man said he wanted support, not welfare from the state and expressed solidarity with his immediate community. Solidarity can also take more overtly political forms such as the struggle of the Zapatistas in Mexico to claim their place in the nation's history.

Naila Kabeer
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK
T +44 (0)1273 606261
F +44 (0)1273 621202
N.Kabeer@ids.ac.uk

See also

Inclusive Citizenship: Meanings And Expressions, Zed Books: London, edited by Naila Kabeer, 2005 (PDF)
Link

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