ABSTRACT
The concept of citizenship has been going through a modern-day transformation for the past 40 years, and this, rather unfortunately, seems to have added to the continuing epistemological confusion about what the concept stands for and how we go about validating it. The further we explore, the deeper we delve into a long process of inquiry and discovery. What in the end is citizenship? Is it a matter of individual or collective happiness in the polis or of equality of rights and opportunity for all? How do we distribute collective rights and opportunities in such a way that no one feels disenfranchised as long as he or she maintains the entitlement to citizenship? The foregoing calls into question the twin issues of justice and fairness, because to be availed of the benefits of citizenship, the distributive mechanism associated with equal opportunity and access to public goods and services must be considered fair and just. In this context, citizenship offers a placeholder for the ideal of justice for all, but whose definition of justice?
