ABSTRACT
Citizenship is a highly complex and contested concept. In its narrowest sense, citizenship refers to a legal status in relation to a particular sovereign nation state, conferring particular rights and responsibilities on the individuals with that status. In many countries in the industrialised West, defi nitions of citizenship are underpinned by Marshall’s (1950) conception of citizenship as consisting of legal, political and social rights. However, contemporary political and social theorists have suggested that true citizenship involves not just formal rights, but also real participation in the life of local communities and the nation state, and have explored how some groups and individuals are excluded from social and economic activity, and from the political processes that might challenge the status quo which perpetuates their exclusion (e.g. Lister 1997; Commission on the Future of Multi-ethnic Britain 2000). Janoski (1998) argues that the right to participation in civic society is as important as legal, political and social rights. Other commentators have argued that narrow concepts of national citizenship have become outdated in the twenty-fi rst century, where local communities and nation states have become more diverse through global population movements, and where many citizens now have multiple loyalties and identities. Held (1996) therefore proposes a model of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’, which acknowledges the interlinking local, national and global aspects of contemporary citizenship.
