This study investigates how youth activists in Hong Kong make sense of citizenship and practice citizenship by participating in different kinds of social movements. Informed by the work of Faulk (2000) and Isin (2009), citizenship is conceptualised as a framework as well as a practice where the definitions are developed and constructed accordingly. A qualitative method is adopted in this research in which in-depth interviews are conducted with 16 youth activists between 18-29 years old and a thematic analysis is carried out for analysis purposes. The major findings suggest that youth activists, even though they are at the forefront of the citizenship movement, find citizenship to be both a familiar and an alien concept. Nevertheless, participation in social movements raise their concerns about citizenship and has compelled some of them to explore a local identity and strive to develop a Hong Kong citizenship from the bottom up. By taking part in social movements, the youth activists build and accumulate experience in citizenship movements, and create diverse and multiple meanings of citizenship. Three types of citizenship acts are found in this study: responsive acts which are emotionally-driven, confrontational and adversarial. The related practices reproduce a market-oriented and exclusionary type of citizenship. Then there are resilient acts of citizenship which are driven by ideology, and emphasise the importance of connecting citizens in the community to collectively advocate for the realisation of citizenship. These citizenship practices tend to produce an open and inclusive type of citizenship. Finally, there are reinvented acts of citizenship, which emphasise autonomous everyday life practices in the community. These are driven by the reflexive practices that are applied in daily life, which tend to inspire a communitarian type of citizenship. The findings of this study also suggest that the authoritarian-neoliberal regime in Hong Kong has a dominant influence over the construction of citizenship. This has been a major force that dictates the direction of youth activism towards exclusionary practices, downplays equal citizenship and causes solo actions in social movements. This citizenship practice reduces the capacity of youth activism from advancing towards activist citizenship, and leads to speculative citizenship characterised by uncertainty and precarity. Notwithstanding the structural constraints, it is found that alternative practices still exist, and the reflexive capacity of youth activism should not be underestimated. It is argued that different acts of citizenship practiced by different groups of activists are not mutually destructive but rather, feed each another in their controversies and debates, and through communication, thus inspiring alternative acts that erode the dominant conception of citizenship, answer to justice as well as inspire activist citizenship.

This book examines citizenship as practiced in China today from a variety of angles. Citizenship in China—and elsewhere in the Global South—has often been perceived as either a distorted echo of the ‘real’ democratic version in Europe and North America, or an orientalized ‘other’ that defines what citizenship is not. By contrast, this book sees Chinese citizenship as an aspect of a connected modernity that is still unfolding. The book focuses on three key tensions: a state preference for sedentarism and governing citizens in place vs. growing mobility, sometimes facilitated by the state; a perception that state-building and development requires a strong state vs. ideas and practices of participatory citizenship; and submission of the individual to the ‘collective’ (state, community, village, family, etc.) vs. the rising salience of conceptions of self-development and self-making projects. Examining manifestations of these tensions can contribute to thinking about citizenship beyond China, including the role of the local in forming citizenship orders; how individualization works in the absence of liberal individualism; and how ‘social citizenship’ is increasingly becoming a reward to ‘good citizens’, rather than a mechanism for achieving citizen equality. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of the journal Citizenship Studies.

Contrary to predictions that it would become increasingly redundant in a globalizing world, citizenship is back with a vengeance. The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship brings together leading experts in law, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and geography to provide a multidisciplinary, comparative discussion of different dimensions of citizenship: as legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; and as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. The contributors engage with some of the oldest normative and substantive quandaries in the literature, dilemmas that have renewed salience in today's political climate. As well as setting an agenda for future theoretical and empirical explorations, this Handbook explores the state of citizenship today in an accessible and engaging manner that will appeal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Chapters highlight variations in citizenship regimes practiced in different countries, from immigrant states to 'non-western' contexts, from settler societies to newly independent states, attentive to both migrants and those who never cross an international border. Topics include the 'selling' of citizenship, multilevel citizenship, in-between statuses, citizenship laws, post-colonial citizenship, the impact of technological change on citizenship, and other cutting-edge issues. This Handbook is the major reference work for those engaged with citizenship from a legal, political, and cultural perspective. Written by the most knowledgeable senior and emerging scholars in their fields, this comprehensive volume offers state-of-the-art analyses of the main challenges and prospects of citizenship in today's world of increased migration and globalization. Special emphasis is put on the question of whether inclusive and egalitarian citizenship can provide political legitimacy in a turbulent world of exploding social inequality and resurgent populism.

Any searching look at the theory and practice of citizenship in the United States today is bewildering and disconcerting. Despite earnest concern for participation, access, and "leverage," there is a widespread perception that nothing citizens do has much meaning or influence. This book argues that for American democracy to work in the twenty-first century, renewed interest in teaching the nation's young citizens a sense of the public good is imperative.All of the nation's founders, especially Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, addressed the question of whether and how a citizen can make a difference in the American political process. This concern harkens back even farther, to Locke, Erasmus, and Aristotle. Today, one obstacle to good citizenship is the social scientific turn in political science. Leaders in civic education in the twentieth century eschewed grand ideas and moral principles in favour of a focus on behaviourism and competitive, liberal politics. Another problem is the growing belief that the government has no business promoting the public good through the support of religious, educational, or cultural efforts.Ralph Ketcham vividly depicts the relationship of private self-interest and public-spirited action as these pertain to citizenship and good government. This is an enlightening book for the general reader, as well as for students, professional social scientists, and political philosophers.

The articles in this book represent a variety of perspectives on the improvements in theory, research and practice in the worldwide movement for deepening democracy and for an emancipatory citizenship education.

Although we live in a period of unprecedented globalization and mass migration, many contemporary western liberal democracies are asserting their sovereignty over who gets to become members of their polities with renewed ferocity. Citizenship matters more than ever. In this book, Elizabeth F. Cohen and Cyril Ghosh provide a concise and comprehensive introduction to the concept of citizenship and evaluate the idea’s continuing relevance in the 21st century. They examine multiple facets of the concept, including the classic and contemporary theories that inform the practice of citizenship, the historical development of citizenship as a practice, and citizenship as an instrument of administrative rationality as well as lived experience. They show how access to a range of rights and privileges that accrue from citizenship in countries of the global north is creating a global citizenship-based caste system. This skillful critical appraisal of citizenship in the context of phenomena such as the global refugee crisis, South-North migration, and growing demands for minority rights will be essential reading for students and scholars of citizenship, migration studies and democratic theory.

The challenges for young people making the transition to adulthood are greater today than ever before. Globalization, with its power to reach across national boundaries and into the smallest communities, carries with it the transformative power of new markets and new technology. At the same time, globalization brings with it new ideas and lifestyles that can conflict with traditional norms and values. And while the economic benefits are potentially enormous, the actual course of globalization has not been without its critics who charge that, to date, the gains have been very unevenly distributed, generating a new set of problems associated with rising inequality and social polarization. Regardless of how the globalization debate is resolved, it is clear that as broad global forces transform the world in which the next generation will live and work, the choices that today's young people make or others make on their behalf will facilitate or constrain their success as adults. Traditional expectations regarding future employment prospects and life experiences are no longer valid. Growing Up Global examines how the transition to adulthood is changing in developing countries, and what the implications of these changes might be for those responsible for designing youth policies and programs, in particular, those affecting adolescent reproductive health. The report sets forth a framework that identifies criteria for successful transitions in the context of contemporary global changes for five key adult roles: adult worker, citizen and community participant, spouse, parent, and household manager.

This book describes, analyses and interprets the topic of citizenship in a global context as it has developed historically, in its variations as a political concept and status, and the ways in which citizens have been and are being educated for that status. The book provides a historical survey which ranges from the Ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, and reveals the legacies which each era passed on to later centuries. It explains the meaning of citizenship, what political citizenship entails and the nature of citizenship as a status, and also tackles the issue of whether there can be a generally accepted, holistic understanding of the idea. For this new edition an epilogue has been written which demonstrates the intense nature of the academic and pedagogical debates on the subject as welll as the practical matters relating to the status since 1990.

Citizenship, denoting full and active membership of the national and political community, has been recognized as a critical concept since ancient times. However, three key and related changes have occurred to each of the basic components of this concept that have altered dramatically to whom and to what it now refers, and the contexts in which it seems proper to use it. First, the scope of membership or who can be a citizen has broadened considerably. Second, the rights and duties of citizenship have likewise been transformed. Finally, the contours of the political community, or the loci where it is appropriate and necessary to adopt civic behaviour, has similarly altered. Changes in one dimension have tended to lead to concomitant changes to the others. For example, the inclusion of women as full members of the political community has initiated a long process of reform to the entitlements and obligations of citizenship, and has challenged not only the traditional contours of the public and private, but also the venues for citizenly activity and the forms it might take. This new collection from Routledge s Critical Concepts in Political Science series brings together in four volumes both canonical and cutting-edge research to enable users to make sense of the theory and practice of citizenship. Volume I explores the classic theories of citizenship: starting with historical accounts of ancient and early modern citizenship, and then charting the shift from republican to liberal citizenship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The volume s focus is then on T. H. Marshall s view of citizenship within the liberal democratic, national welfare states that emerged after the Second World War, and the critiques that came from new left and new right alike from the 1970s onwards. Volume II asks Who is a Citizen? . The major works gathered in this volume take particular account of the impact of feminist activism and scholarship; the emergence and critique of multiculturalism in addressing ethnic, racial and religious diversity; and the rights asserted by immigrants and asylum seekers. Volume III, meanwhile, gathers the best scholarship on citizenship practice, and explores how the rights and duties of citizenship have moved from the state sphere strictly defined, to encompass a much broader reading of politics that also includes much of civil society. The final volume of the collection addresses the ways in which issues about and around citizenship have simultaneously extended beyond the state into transnational and supranational contexts (such as the European Union), and have also, in some instances, become devolved from the state to the regional and local levels. With a full index, and a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, "Citizenship" is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar and sometimes overlooked texts. For researchers, students, and policy-makers, it is as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.