ABSTRACT
Empowerment and citizenship have become attractive concepts for developing changes in youth policies and the welfare state. In this chapter, the author develops a critical review of some of the meanings first of citizenship and then of empowerment and considers the ways in which they might be relevant for young people, focusing on European citizenship; citizenship and marginality; citizenship and the welfare state; citizens and non-citizens. For a range of marginalised groups, citizenship represents a way of gaining universal recognition for their rights in the liberal individualist tradition. In T. H. Marshall’s conception of social citizenship, he envisaged an evolutionary expansion of citizenship rights as part of a process of modernisation, whereby all members of the polity would acquire rights to various kinds of social benefits. This was based upon a post-war model of the welfare state stabilised by Keynesian policies of full (male) employment.
