Citizenship Essay, Research Paper

1. What is citizenship?

According to The Citizenship debates, by the term citizenship, we must understand not only a bundle of formal rights, but the entire mode of incorporation of individuals and groups into the society (251). Citizenship is important because it has become a legal status carrying with it rights to certain things?perhaps immunities, perhaps possessions, perhaps expectations?available or available to many kinds of person for many kinds of reasons (37). My personal definition of citizenship is the right or freedom to express myself, to vote, and the freedom to anything as long as it is according to law. To be a citizen anywhere, you are part of a large community.

In order to define citizenship, it is important to take into account social, property, economic, political, and human rights. Social rights are membership into local communities and functional associations. Property rights is not a right to possess property, but a right to acquire it, if you can, and to protect it, if you can get it (105). Max Weber defines economic citizenship as including certain social categories or class which have a specific communal or economic interest (43). Class citizenship is stratified in which there are greater citizens and lesser citizens; entrepreneurs and manual laborers (43). Political rights gave potential power whose exercise demanded experience, organization, and a change of ideas as to the proper functions of government (Marshall 107). As for human rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that ?all beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, independent of their race, color, national or ethnic origin.? One important similarity in all of these different rights is that each one is demanding respect.