ABSTRACT
Citizenship has been the linchpin of the modern nation-state. Through citizenship, the individual acquires a status in the state that ensures certain rights and defines responsibilities. As a component in political theory, citizenship is a function of consent. In the United States, citizenship has been based on a combination of birth on the soil of the sovereign's territory and by descent according to blood kinship. The vision of what citizenship means in terms of a national ideology has shifted historically in the United States. The disconnection of rights from citizenship status has generated a concern that citizenship no longer matters. Since the late 1980s, citizenship has become a salient issue for policy makers, scholars, immigrants, and the public at large. In the view of both ancient and modern liberal political theorists, the relationship between the individual and the state was defined by the concept of citizenship.
