ABSTRACT
This paper1 is divided into two main parts. The first reviews the different meanings of citizenship in order to argue for a synthesis of the rights and participatory traditions, linked through the notion of human agency. The second considers citizenship’s exclusionary tensions which have served to exclude women and minority groups from full citizenship, both from within and from without the nation state. In doing so, it addresses the challenge of diversity and difference for citizenship to argue the case for a ‘differentiated universalism’ with regard to both participation and rightsbased conceptions of citizenship.
