ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes methods of citizening throughout the life course, avoiding de-citizening and promoting re-citizening in later life. It identifies practice strategies for social work with older people at the end of life. The starting point of a citizenship social work is an understanding of citizenship. Citizenship is not only a status, something unchanging that we either possess or do not. It is also a process, in which belonging is lost and built up in social interactions and relationships. It is humanistic because it puts recognition of the humanity and human rights of all the people that social work serves at the centre of practice. Citizening is consonant with an ethics of care view of human life. Caring and dependence is citizening because it creates ties and relationships in people’s lives. De-citizening is the process by which older people lose elements of their citizenship through ageing.
