ABSTRACT
This chapter goes to the heart of the citizenship debate by asking what it is to be a good citizen, and who is included. The concept of citizenship changes over time, is influenced by culture and means different things to different people. It is therefore important to be clear about what is meant when we promote citizenship education. Whilst traditional notions of citizenship persist, there are newly emerging concepts of citizenship that challenge and add complexity to existing ideas about what it means to be a citizen. It is no longer tenable, for example, to universalise the citizen as white, male, heterosexual and middle-class. Various individuals and social groups continue to encounter barriers to claiming their citizenship rights as a result of disadvantage and/or discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, poverty or a combination of these and other factors (Osler, 2003; Garrett and Piper, 2008). It is no longer credible either to claim that the acts of good citizens will bring about the emancipation of women, the working classes or minority ethnic groups. This chapter will explore the ways in which these struggles cast doubt on the traditional citizenship project.
