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Citizenship: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

28 Mar 2011

This policy primer discusses the objectives and implications of citizenship policy and examines the concept of citizenship in the UK in the light of both its historical context and recent policy changes.

The issue: What is British citizenship and why does it matter?

Breaking the link between settlement and citizenship, what is the relation between citizenship, belonging and britishness, what is the aim of citizenship policy, what is the relationship between citizenship, immigration and equality, implications for debates.

In its strictest sense, citizenship is a legal status that means a person has a right to live in a state and that state cannot refuse them entry or deport them. This legal status may be conferred at birth, or, in some states, obtained through ‘naturalisation’. In wealthy liberal democratic states citizenship also brings with it rights to vote, rights to welfare, education or health care etc. In this formal sense, citizenship acquisition for oneself or one’s children is seen as principally related to migrants. However, it is important to recognise that citizenship isn’t only about migrants, but is more generally about individuals’ relations to the state and to each other. Liberal ‘republican’ positions in particular have emphasised the relation between citizenship and political participation such as voting, engagement in civil society and other forms of political mobilisation. Moreover, as well as a legal status, citizenship can also indicate a subjective feeling of identity and social relations of reciprocity and responsibility. Sometimes these are described in words like ‘loyalty’, ‘values’, ‘belonging’ or ‘shared cultural heritage’. This also points to the complex and often assumed relation between citizenship and belonging to ‘the nation’.

The British debate on immigration and citizenship occurs within a context of more than a decade of policies and reviews on citizenship more generally. When the Labour government came to power in 1997 it strongly emphasised ‘active citizenship’, an attempt to transform citizens from what was perceived as ‘passive recipients of public services’ to actively engaged participants in public life (Mayo and Rooke 2006). In 1998 a policy review of citizenship education in England was conducted by Sir Bernard Crick. In September 2002, following its recommendation, citizenship education was introduced as a statutory subject in English secondary schools. Also in 2002 The Advisory Board on Naturalisation and Integration (ABNII) was established, again chaired by Sir Bernard Crick, to develop proposals for language and citizenship courses and tests for applicants to British citizenship. It took place against the background of a number of disturbances in towns in Northern England, including Bradford, in 2001, which given rise to concerns about ‘community cohesion’ and a lack of ‘shared values’ (Home Office 2001a; Ryan 2010).The ‘Life in the UK Advisory Group’ situated its work within a much broader policy remit however, including ‘a wider citizenship agenda’.

In 2007 then Prime Minister Gordon Brown requested a review of British citizenship to clarify the legal rights and responsibilities of different categories of citizenship and nationality, and the incentives for residents to become citizens. The ‘Lord Goldsmith Citizenship Review’ was also requested to ‘explore the role of citizens and residents in civic society, including voting, jury service and other forms of civil participation’. The review, while focussing on the legal aspects of citizenship, was again therefore set within a broader policy context.

The new coalition government has continued to emphasise the importance of citizenship, but situating it within the context of the Big Society. This emphasises the responsibility of individual citizens and communities to solve problems build communities. In November 2010 the government announced who had been selected to run the pilot projects for the National Citizen Service. These will run programmes for 16 year olds to develop the skills to be “active and responsible citizens” In sum, the debate on the legal status of citizenship is taking place within a broader debate about Britishness and ‘national identity’. The legal status (but often not the broader debate) also has to manage both the legacies of the British Empire and Britain’s membership of the European Union. The Labour Government of 1997-2010 increasingly moved to incorporate aspects of subjective identity and social relations into the process of attaining the legal status of citizenship and introduced significant changes to the processes of citizenship and settlement. The naturalisation policy of the coalition government is not yet clear but there is likely to be a policy announcement in the coming months.

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Citizenship policy is related to, but not identical with, policy on settlement (see the briefing on ‘ Settlement in the UK ‘). The legal concept of settlement came into existence through the 1971 Immigration Act. People with certain types of immigration status can acquire the right to remain indefinitely in the UK i.e. become ‘settled’. This means they have the right to live and work in the UK without restrictions. Under certain circumstances settled migrants may still be deported, settled status may be revoked, and their children do not necessarily have British citizenship. In order to be ‘non-deportable’, a person has to have British citizenship. It is possible to apply for British citizenship after a period of settlement. Under UK legislation it is possible to be a dual national, though holders of dual nationality may be stripped of their British citizenship under certain circumstances (Gibney 2008).

UK naturalisation policy takes as its starting point the 1981 British Nationality Act. This Act marked the downgrading of relations with former colonies (former ‘British subjects’), and the abandonment of ‘ius soli’, the right, dating back to 1608, of all those born on British territory to be British subjects. Nevertheless a set period of legal residence continued to be the principal basis for granting citizenship. There was a linguistic competence requirement but this was very rarely enforced. While not overtly stated this assumes that the longer one stays in a country, the closer the links one develops with it: one becomes accustomed to its ways, settles in to a community, and begins to build a life there. In effect, the indicator of ‘integration’ is length of (legal) stay.

Changes began in 2001. The Cantle Report, commissioned to identify views and practices to promote social cohesion following the Bradford disturbances, emphasised the importance of promoting ‘a meaningful concept of citizenship’ (Home Office 2001a) and suggested the promotion of English language acquisition and an oath of national allegiance from migrants. There was broad ministerial acceptance of the approach of the Cantle Report in the publication of Building Cohesive Communities also known as The Denham Report (Home Office 2001b). While stating that ‘there is no single dominant and unchanging culture into which all must assimilate’, this also identified the importance of ‘shared values’ (Home Office 2001b). This led to new emphasis on the link between social cohesion and citizenship. The recommendations of the Life in the UK Advisory Group, that applicants either pass a ‘citizenship test’ or complete an English language with citizenship course, were implemented in 2005. These requirements have been gradually extended, and since 2007 language requirements have been made of certain groups who are applying to enter the UK or who are applying for settlement, as well as those who are applying for citizenship.

Legislation passed in 2009 introduced fundamental changes to obtaining citizenship. In particular it broke the link between length of residence and right to settlement and naturalisation. For those who are eligible, after an initial temporary period (which can run to 5 years), a new status of ‘probationary citizen’ was introduced which could last for a further 1-5 years. This is not a secure residence status, and does not confer eligibility for most benefits, family reunion or home student fees. While using the terminology of ‘citizenship’ it brings with it no citizenship rights. Those with this status can then apply for ‘permanent residence’ (PR i.e. settlement) or British citizenship. The possibility for new and tougher language and knowledge tests to enter both probationary citizenship and citizenship/PR status were also introduced. Processes for acquiring these statuses also offered inducements to apply for British citizenship rather than ‘permanent residence’.

Most of these changes are due to be implemented in the summer of 2011. The coalition government has not said what it will do, but has made a commitment that it will make settlement (and by implication citizenship acquisition) more difficult. It has also stated that it will do away with the proposal to encourage migrant volunteering or ‘active citizenship’ which it deemed ‘too complicated, bureaucratic, and in the end ineffective’ (Home Office 2010).

Sawyer (2010) argues that historically ‘Britishness’ is ambiguous but inclusive. This is not to say that aliens were treated as if they were British, but that there was in practice considerable ambiguity about who belongs. “It has not been necessary to formally be part of the fabric of society for practical day-to-day purposes, since that depended mostly on actual, rather than even explicitly lawful residence” (Sawyer 2010: 7). She points to the importance of settlement rather than citizenship as an indication of this. The attempt to convert permanent residence into a status primarily for those who are not permitted dual nationality, taken up by very few people marks an important shift. This, together with the breaking of the link between length of stay and right of settlement, means both that the space for ‘good enough’ belonging without formal citizenship is increasingly narrowed and that the difference in rights between citizens and non-citizens is widened.

There may be unintended consequences of this, not least that far from giving value to citizenship, it risks making the motivation for acquisition of citizenship far more instrumental. It is already noteworthy that EEA nationals are less likely than others to apply for citizenship. Interestingly there has been a decline in applications for British citizenship from the 2004 EU Accession states since EU Enlargement, even though there has been an increase in the numbers of migrants from those states. Rutter et al. conclude that this is ‘because this group has the fewest restrictions in the UK on their rights of movement and abode and on their social rights, thus the least ‘need’ to apply for citizenship’ (Rutter et al. 2008). The instrumentalisation of citizenship runs counter to the original policy intention to raise the status of citizenship and makes its acquisition more than a tick box bureaucratic exercise.

The shift to incorporate ideas of identity and belonging into the legal processes of naturalisation emphasises the symbolic dimension of citizenship. Demonstrating ‘belonging’ is no longer largely a matter of the length of time a person has (legally) been in the UK with the question of settlement or citizenship being a technical one. This means one must answer questions like: What is Britishness? What are British values? What is belonging? The answers to these questions are very difficult to pin down, and one cannot assume that British nationals will not answer these in very different ways. Unlike the straightforward question, ‘How long have you legally resided in the UK?’ these sorts of value laden questions do not have settled answers and this allows for new spaces of contestation to open up. The current Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Warsi recently said that she would fail former Conservative Party Chairman Norman Tebbit’s cricket test of belonging to Britain because she would cheer on the Pakistani cricket team.

Is citizenship an end point, a reward for being ‘integrated’, in effect a personal benefit that enables an individual to claim a variety of rights? Or is it part of a process, a social good that facilitates cohesion? Is citizenship an end in itself, or is it a means to a cohesive society? The obvious answer is that it is both an individual reward and a social good, but they have very different policy implications. If citizenship is primarily a reward that gives access to resources its restriction is part of what gives it value, while if it is primarily a social good, that suggests that there is a benefit in facilitating the broadest possible access to it. While the current citizenship debate had its basis in concerns about cohesion, the tests and other restrictions have in practice become obstacles to achieving the legal status, rather than enablers of integration.

Most of the public debate on immigration has been conducted about entry rather than about settlement. However the new focus on net migration is concerned with ‘numbers in’ balancing ‘numbers out’. There is no explicit interest in the citizenship of the numbers in and numbers out, and in 2009/10 for instance the net migration figure increased even though the numbers in declined because fewer British nationals left the UK. The only group whose movement can be directly controlled in and out are non-EEA nationals. The focus on net migration means that there is an interest in discouraging the settlement of non-EU migrants in particular as the one group whose movement out can be overtly facilitated. Current Home Secretary Teresa May has stated that it is ‘too easy at the moment to move from temporary residence to permanent settlement’ (Home Office 2010). As discussed above, because of the increasingly close relation between settlement and formal citizenship, this has direct implications for citizenship.

Making settlement and citizenship more difficult can help to limit net migration by encouraging churn and in effect may be used to enable long stay to be limited to those with high human capital. However, there are also risks to such policies. Increasing the proportion of migrants who have temporary stay will result in a growing number of people residing in the UK with very limited rights. For migrants who wish to stay longer than the initial period granted by their visa there are three options, overstaying, renewing their visa (i.e. extending their temporary stay), or changing to a different visa status. Depending on how the legislation is implemented and on the particular conditions attached to their entry, this would have different consequences. One consequence of increased numbers of people on temporary visas that are valid for a period of several years is that some will become parents while they are resident in the UK. These children will not be British citizens. In this way there is a risk that citizenship and settlement policies make integration and cohesion more difficult rather than easier.

The UK has long been identified as a country of ‘civic’ rather than ‘ethnic’ nationalism, where membership of the nation is defined as political rather than ethnic. The reasons for this have been traced back to the development of the state, and also the British Empire which ruled territories and people as British subjects (Shulman 2002). However, not all subjects of the British Empire were equal to one another. MacDonald has cogently argued that ‘the Aliens Act 1905 was not merely born out of an enormous anti-Jewish agitation. It also came in the wake of half a century of agitation for the strictest control of non-white immigration throughout the self-governing part of the Commonwealth’ (MacDonald 2010).

There continues to be a complex relation between immigration, citizenship and ‘race’ that is an important component of public debate. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, warned for example ‘Migration threatens the very ethos or DNA of our nation’ (Times, January 7 2010). However, one of the fundamental principles of liberal citizenship is that all citizens are formally equal to each other. This is the case whether citizenship is acquired by naturalisation or by registration (‘by birth’). Notably ‘migrant’ in the UK is generally officially defined as being ‘foreign born’ and so British citizens by naturalisation continue to count as ‘migrants’; their impact on labour market and costs to welfare state etc are presented accordingly (Anderson and Blinder, 2011). Of course there are many axes of inequality between citizens (by ethnicity, gender, physical and mental disability, income and so on); if there were not there would be no call for anti-discrimination legislation and practices. This is complicated for non-EEA foreign-born migrants (who may also be subject to other forms of discrimination of course) by the fact that, until they obtain settlement, employers are obliged to treat them differently (which some might equate to ‘discrimination’) on the grounds of their nationality.

The relation between citizenship and ideals of cohesion, integration and equality, remains unclear. More particularly the aims of citizenship policy are not well defined, in stark contrast to immigration policy. Nevertheless there have been considerable changes to the processes of acquiring formal citizenship, including the introduction of a number of tests. These ostensibly promote citizenship and sense of belonging, but there is also some evidence that they are making citizenship acquisition more difficult, particularly for certain groups (Ryan 2010). It seems that a number of, often competing, ideas about what citizenship is and why it should be valued are being brought to bear on acquisition processes. These formal processes are not necessarily able to accommodate all these ideas.

The breaking of the link between settlement and citizenship represents a fundamental break with past practice by attempting to draw a ‘bright line’ between those who have citizenship and those who do not. The sharpening differentiation between citizens and non-citizens is occurring at a time of ‘super-diversity’ (Vertovec 2007), when migrants from many different countries are moving to the UK for very different reasons and lengths of stay. Arguably this makes a more flexible approach more desirable, and there is a risk of creating an ever increasing number of people with extremely limited rights. The question of the relation between formal citizenship and Britishness, between belonging to the state and belonging to ‘the community’ will continue to exercise public debate for years to come.

• Anderson, B. and S. Blinder. “Who Counts as a Migrant: Definitions and their Consequences.” Migration Observatory Briefing, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2011.
• Cabinet Office. “Building the Big Society.” Cabinet Office, London, 2010. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/building-big-society_0.pdf.
• Gibney, M. “Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom.’” Government and Opposition 43 (2008): 139-143.
• Home Office. “Government Announcement on Settlement Reforms.” Press Release, Home Office, London, 5 November 2010. http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/newsarticles/2010/nov/15-settlement-reforms.
• Home Office Community Cohesion Review Team. “Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team Chaired by Ted Cantle.” Home Office, London, 2001a.
• Home Office Ministerial Group on Public Order and Community Cohesion. “Building Cohesive Communities: Report of the Ministerial Group on Public Order and Community Cohesion.” Home Office, London, 2001b.
• MacDonald, I. “Rights of Settlement in the UK: A Historical Perspective” Paper presented at the Migration and Law Network Conference, Middlesex University, 9 September 2010.
• Mayo, M. and A. Rooke. “Active Learning for Active Citizenship: An Evaluation Report.” Home Office, London, 2006.
• Rutter, J., M. Latorre, and D. Sriskandarajah, “Beyond Naturalisation: Citizenship Policy in an Age of Super Mobility.” Institute for Public Policy Research, London, 2008.
• Ryan, B. “Integration Rules in Immigration and Nationality Law: The Case of the United Kingdom.” Report for the EIF project ‘Integration and Naturalisation Tests: The New Way to European Citizenship’, Centre for Migration Law, Nijmegenr, 2010.
• Sawyer, C. “EUDO Citizenship Observatory Country Report: United Kingdom.” Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, 2010.
• Shulman, S. “Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism.” Comparative Political Studies 35 (2002): 554-585.
• Vertovec, S. “Super-Diversity and its Implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 6 (2007): 1024-1054.
• Bridget Anderson

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The Importance of Citizenship: Rights, Responsibilities, Benefits, and Functions

Citizenship is a key component of being a member of a country and is crucial in determining a person’s identity and rights in a given community. We shall discuss the importance of citizenship in this article, as well as its rewards, rights, and duties. Understanding the fundamental characteristics of citizenship can help us better comprehend the benefits, responsibilities, and essential purposes it fulfils. This article will serve as your thorough reference whether you want to learn about citizenship requirements or are inquisitive about the benefits it offers.

Table of Contents

Rights of Citizenship 

Citizenship comes with a variety of rights and protections that are essential for people to live in a country. While these rights may vary from country to country, several components are universal in many different legal systems. The freedom to vote is one of the most important liberties a citizen enjoys. The democratic process gives citizens the ability to take part and have an impact on choices that affect both their local community and the country as a whole.

Additionally, citizenship frequently gives people the ability to apply for a passport, allowing them to travel freely and contacting the consulates or embassies of their home country for diplomatic support. Access to public services like healthcare, education, and social welfare is made possible by citizenship, which also protects the right to reside and work in the nation.

Responsibilities of Citizenship

Along with privileges, citizenship entails obligations that advance the general welfare and growth of the country. Obeying the law in the country is one of the main duties. To maintain peace, order, and stability in society, citizens are expected to respect and abide by the law.

Tax payment is another essential civic obligation. Taxes support the nation’s development, public services, and infrastructure. Citizens actively contribute to the development and prosperity of their nation by carrying out this duty.

Participation in civic affairs is yet another essential duty of citizenship. This covers political debates, volunteering, and involvement in neighbourhood projects. Citizens assist build a cohesive and inclusive society by actively contributing to the community.

Citizenship entails the obligation to protect the country if required. Citizens may be asked to join the military or help in other ways during times of crisis or conflict to ensure the safety and security of their fellow citizens.

Benefits of Citizenship 

Numerous advantages of citizenship improve both a person’s personal and professional lives. The defence of legal rights is a noteworthy benefit. Citizens have access to a fair trial and equitable treatment under the law, as well as legal protection against discrimination.

Additionally, citizenship opens up more job prospects for people. When it comes to work, many nations provide their residents with preferential treatment, which may include access to government jobs, scholarships, and training opportunities. Citizenship frequently provides doors to social and economic advantages, enabling people to actively participate in the economic development of the nation.

Another benefit of citizenship is access to healthcare. The majority of citizens have access to comprehensive healthcare, ensuring their health and the health of their families. A future that is healthier and more secure is made possible by this access to healthcare services.

The ability to sponsor family members for immigration or citizenship is another benefit of citizenship. Families are able to live together and establish a solid support system in their adopted nation thanks to this reunion benefit.

Functions of Citizenship 

1. fostering a sense of national identity and belonging:.

A shared sense of national identity, pride, patriotism, and attachment to one’s country are all fostered by citizenship. It fosters social cohesiveness and togetherness by giving people a sense of belonging to a wider group. People establish a link to their nation’s culture, customs, and ideals through identifying as citizens.

2. Promoting social integration:

By making it easier for people to integrate into society, citizenship encourages social integration. People learn about their country’s history, beliefs, institutions, and democratic principles through citizenship education and civic engagement. This information encourages people to take an active role in the democratic process and feel a feeling of civic responsibility, which helps them improve their communities.

3. Acting as a mechanism for political representation:

Citizenship enables people to take part in politics and guarantees that their voices and interests are heard. Citizens have the opportunity to choose representatives who will rule on their behalf through the right to vote and to participate in politics. Due to elected officials’ accountability to the people they represent, this system of political representation promotes democratic governance and results in a more open and responsive government.

4. Enhancing democratic governance and accountability:

Citizenship provides a foundation for accountability and openness, which helps democratic systems function as a whole. Democratic institutions grow more receptive to the demands and ambitions of the populace as citizens actively engage in civic life, hold elected officials responsible, and voice their concerns. This active participation encourages a system of checks and balances and ensures that choices are made in the best interests of the public.

5. Promoting social and economic rights:

Access to social and economic rights within a country is mostly dependent on citizenship. Citizenship fosters social inclusion and lowers inequities by offering people the right to education, healthcare, social welfare, and work possibilities. It offers a base for people to actively participate in the social and economic advancement of their nation, raising living standards and enhancing wellbeing generally.

6. Facilitating international representation and diplomacy: 

Citizenship enables people to represent their nation abroad. up behalf of their country, citizens can take up roles as diplomats, ambassadors, or members of international organisations. This portrayal encourages diplomacy, collaboration, and the defence of national interests and rights overseas. Additionally, it makes it possible for people to obtain consular assistance and safety when they are outside of their own country, thus solidifying their ties to it.

Additionally, citizenship serves as a tool for achieving social and economic inclusion . Citizenship contributes to the reduction of inequalities and fosters upward social mobility by providing people with access to social services, educational possibilities, and work prospects.

A dedication to a country and its principles, citizenship is more than just a legal position. Individuals are more equipped to actively participate in reshaping their communities when they are aware of the rights, obligations, advantages, and functions of citizenship. By appreciating the value of citizenship, we may promote a more inclusive and prosperous society for all, where rights are upheld, duties are carried out, and civic responsibilities help to advance the welfare of the country.

Also Read:- https://www.borthakursiasacademy.com/blog/polity-supreme-court-and-judicial-review/

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What you need to know about global citizenship education

For centuries, common aspirations for mutual respect, peace, and understanding were reflected in traditional concepts across cultures and civilizations – from 'ubuntu' (I am because of who we all are) in African philosophy to 'sumak kawsay' (harmony within communities, ourselves and nature) in Quechua. Although the term "global citizenship education" (GCED) was only coined in 2011, the values it represents have been central to UNESCO's mission since its founding in 1947.

By building peace through education and reminding humanity of our common ties, UNESCO has long championed the ideas now formalized as GCED. As our world grows increasingly interdependent, GCED is more vital than ever for international solidarity and inspiring learners of all ages to positively contribute to their local and global communities. But what exactly does global citizenship education entail, why it matters today, and how UNESCO is driving this movement?

What’s the idea behind global citizenship?

Unlike citizenship – special rights, privileges and responsibilities related to "belonging" to a particular nation/state, the global citizenship concept is based on the idea we are connected not just with one country but with a broader global community. So, by positively contributing to it, we can also influence change on regional, national and local levels. Global citizens don't have a special passport or official title, nor do they need to travel to other countries or speak different languages to become one. It's more about the mindset and actual actions that a person takes daily. A global citizen understands how the world works, values differences in people, and works with others to find solutions to challenges too big for any one nation.

Citizenship and global citizenship do not exclude each other. Instead, these two concepts are mutually reinforcing. 

What is global citizenship education about?

Economically, environmentally, socially and politically, we are linked to other people on the planet as never before. With the transformations that the world has gone through in the past decades – expansion of digital technology, international travel and migration, economic crises, conflicts, and environmental degradation – how we work, teach and learn has to change, too. UNESCO promotes global citizenship education to help learners understand the world around them and work together to fix the big problems that affect everyone, no matter where they're from.

GCED is about teaching and learning to become these global citizens who live together peacefully on one planet. What does it entail?

Adjusting curricula and content of the lessons to provide knowledge about the world and the interconnected nature of contemporary challenges and threats. Among other things, a deep understanding of human rights, geography, the environment, systems of inequalities, and historical events that underpinned current developments;

Nurturing cognitive, social and other skills to put the knowledge into practice and make it relevant to learners' realities. For example, thinking critically and asking questions about what's equitable and just, taking and understanding other perspectives and opinions, resolving conflicts constructively, working in teams, and interacting with people of different backgrounds, origins, cultures and perspectives; 

Instilling values that reflect the vision of the world and provide purpose, such as respect for diversity, empathy, open-mindedness, justice and fairness for everyone;

Adopting behaviours to act on their values and beliefs: participating actively in the society to solve global, national and local challenges and strive for the collective good.

What UNESCO does in global citizenship education

UNESCO works with countries to improve and rewire their education systems so that they support creativity, innovation and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development. 

• Provides a big-picture vision  for an education that learners of all ages need to survive and thrive in the 21 st  century. Adopted in 2023, the UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace and Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development is a global standard-setting instrument that lays out how education should be used to bring about lasting peace and foster human development.  

Supports  the development of curricula and learning materials on global citizenship themes tailored for diverse cultural contexts. Among many examples are the  general guidance document on teaching and learning objectives of global citizenship education  or recommendations on integrating social and emotional learning principles (SEL) in the education process.

Studies the positive impact of learning across subjects and  builds linkages between sectors and spheres . One of the key focus areas is the Framework on Culture and Arts Education , in which UNESCO highlights the positive impact learning of the arts and through the arts has on academic performance, acquisition of different skills and greater well-being, as well as broadening of the horizons. 

Collaborates with partners  across UNESCO programmes and the broader UN system to address contemporary threats to human rights and peace and  infuse the principles  of understanding, non-discrimination and respect for human dignity in education. Among others, UNESCO leads the global education efforts to counter hate speech online and offline, address antisemitism , fight racism , prevent violent extremism , enable cultural dialogue , educate about human rights violations and violent pasts.

Monitors  how the core values of global citizenship education are reflected in and supported by education policy and the curriculum to deliver it effectively. For example, by collecting global data on this indicator every four years through a survey questionnaire designed for the Recommendation.

Promotes international collaboration  in education through  UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs , and  UNESCO Associated Schools Network , connecting over 12,000 educational institutions worldwide.

Why does UNESCO prioritize global citizenship education?

Quality education is among 17 Sustainable Development Goals put forth by the United Nations, where GCED is mentioned as one of the topic areas that countries must promote. While leading the global efforts to achieve this goal, UNESCO sees education as the main driver of human development that can accelerate progress in bringing about social justice, gender equality, inclusion, and other Goals. 

UNESCO believes that only an education that provides a global outlook with a deep appreciation of local perspectives can address the cross-cutting challenges of today and tomorrow. This vision is reaffirmed in the Incheon Declaration made in 2015 at the World Education Forum and further reflected in UNESCO's Futures of Education report.

Based on the evidence that UNESCO has accumulated on GCED impact, learners who benefit from such education from early stages become less prone to conflicts and are more open to resolving them peacefully while respecting each other's differences. It has also proven successful in post-conflict transformation. For example, discussing the root causes of human rights violations that occurred in the past helps to detect alarming tendencies and avoid them in the future. 

How is GCED implemented?

GCED is not a single subject with a set curriculum but rather a framework, a prism through which education is seen. It can be delivered as an integral part of existing subjects – from geography to social studies – or independently. UNESCO supports the dissemination of GCED on different levels and in multiple areas of life beyond the classroom.

On a policy level:  Governments can develop national strategies and frameworks that recognize the importance of understanding local issues from a broader global perspective and prioritize education programmes that reflect this vision. 

In the classroom:  Teachers can incorporate content and materials that build awareness of global issues and intercultural understanding. For instance, in Geography, pupils can learn about climate change and the distribution of resources. In Social Sciences, they find out how environmental degradation impacts children's rights worldwide. In Science, they discover how trees soak up carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and can help tackle climate change. Teachers can also assign students a group project where they will have to devise a campaign to address climate change in their local community.

Out of school:  Museums and cultural institutions can design exhibits and educational materials that inspire global citizenship. Exchange programs allow young people to broaden their horizons by visiting other communities and countries.

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citizenship , relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection. Citizenship implies the status of freedom with accompanying responsibilities. Citizens have certain rights, duties, and responsibilities that are denied or only partially extended to aliens and other noncitizens residing in a country . In general, full political rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office, are predicated upon citizenship. The usual responsibilities of citizenship are allegiance, taxation , and military service .

Citizenship is the most privileged form of nationality . This broader term denotes various relations between an individual and a state that do not necessarily confer political rights but do imply other privileges, particularly protection abroad. It is the term used in international law to denote all persons whom a state is entitled to protect. Nationality also serves to denote the relationship to a state of entities other than individuals; corporations, ships, and aircraft, for example, possess a nationality.

The concept of citizenship first arose in towns and city-states of ancient Greece , where it generally applied to property owners but not to women, slaves, or the poorer members of the community . A citizen in a Greek city-state was entitled to vote and was liable to taxation and military service. The Romans first used citizenship as a device to distinguish the residents of the city of Rome from those peoples whose territories Rome had conquered and incorporated. As their empire continued to grow, the Romans granted citizenship to their allies throughout Italy proper and then to peoples in other Roman provinces, until in 212 ce citizenship was extended to all free inhabitants of the empire. Roman citizenship conferred important legal privileges within the empire. (See civitas .)

The concept of national citizenship virtually disappeared in Europe during the Middle Ages , replaced as it was by a system of feudal rights and obligations. In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance , the holding of citizenship in various cities and towns of Italy and Germany became a guarantee of immunity for merchants and other privileged persons from the claims and prerogatives of feudal overlords. Modern concepts of citizenship crystallized in the 18th century during the American and French Revolutions, when the term citizen came to suggest the possession of certain liberties in the face of the coercive powers of absolutist monarchs.

In England the term citizen originally referred to membership of a borough or local municipal corporation, while the word subject was used to emphasize the individual’s subordinate position relative to the monarch or state. The word subject is still used in preference to citizen in British common-law usage and nationality legislation, but the two terms are virtually equivalent, since the British constitutional monarchy is now a ceremonial one that has lost its former political powers over its subjects.

The principal grounds for acquiring citizenship (apart from international transactions such as transfer of territory or option) are birth within a certain territory, descent from a citizen parent, marriage to a citizen, and naturalization . There are two main systems used to determine citizenship as of the time of birth: jus soli , whereby citizenship is acquired by birth within the territory of the state, regardless of parental citizenship; and jus sanguinis , whereby a person, wherever born, is a citizen of the state if, at the time of his or her birth, his or her parent is one. The United States and the countries of the British Commonwealth adopt the jus soli as their basic principle; they also recognize acquisition of nationality by descent but subject it to strict limitations. Other countries generally adopt the jus sanguinis as their basic principle, supplementing it by provisions for acquisition of citizenship in case of combination of birth and domicile within the country, birth within the country of parents born there, and so on. The provisions of nationality laws that overlap often result in dual nationality; a person may be a citizen of two countries. Alternatively, the lack of uniform rules on citizenship acquisition and loss have sometimes produced lack of citizenship (statelessness).

The acquisition of citizenship by a woman through marriage to a citizen was the prevailing principle in modern times until after World War I . Under this system, the wife and children shared the nationality status of the husband and father as head of the family . From the 1920s, under the impact of women’s suffrage and ideas about the equality of men and women, a new system developed in which a woman’s nationality was not affected by marriage. The resulting mixed-nationality marriages sometimes create complications, particularly in regard to the nationality status of the children, and accordingly various mixed systems have been devised, all stressing the woman’s and child’s freedom of choice.

• Immigration

The Complicated Truth About What U.S. Citizenship Means Today

T he first time I saw the Statue of Liberty was 25 years ago, from a noisy ferry that brought me and hundreds of other eager tourists across New York Harbor. Back then I was a foreign student, in Manhattan for three days to attend an academic conference on linguistics. I had only one afternoon to devote to sightseeing, and faced with the choice of which landmark to visit, I settled immediately on Ellis Island. The site loomed large in my imagination, likely because of its romantic portrayal in the American movies I had grown up watching. I ambled through the stately inspection room, where original chandeliers cast their pale light, sat for a few minutes on the wooden benches, then went inside the exhibit rooms, filled with artifacts documenting the arrival of immigrants.

I still remember the jolt of surprise I felt when I came across a portrait of three Moroccan men and a little boy, all clad in national dress–cloak, djellaba, cross-body bag, leather slippers. It was a trace of a history I didn’t know existed. After the surprise wore off, I began to wonder about their names, their pasts, their families, their reasons for emigrating. Years later, researching this picture online, I discovered that the photographer, an employee of the Executive Division of Immigration, had scribbled “Arab jugglers” on the back of the print. These were performers, then, seeking fame or fortune here. They forged new identities and became Americans, just like the other 12 million immigrants and refugees who passed through Ellis Island from 1882 to 1954. Or at least, that is how the story goes: America was formed from huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

As I walked around the exhibit rooms at the Ellis Island immigration museum, it never occurred to me that someday I would become an immigrant too, and eventually a citizen. At the time, my goal had been to complete a graduate degree in linguistics and return to Morocco. But my life took an unexpected turn when I met and fell in love with an American. I said yes to him, and yes to staying here. Years passed, during which I learned more about the country I now called home: its charms and foibles, its culture and history, its claims to being a “nation of immigrants.” And I came to understand that, like any origin story, this one leaves out inconvenient details.

The boundaries of Americanness, which seem so elastic in the myth of a “nation of immigrants,” have in fact been very rigid–and always, always contested. At the founding of the United States, American citizenship was available exclusively to “free white persons.” It took decades of struggle, and a bloody civil war, before citizenship was extended to formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Indigenous people, who were members of sovereign nations, did not have full access to citizenship until 1924. And for much of this country’s history, a slew of race-based immigration laws, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, prevented most immigrants from outside Western Europe from coming to the U.S. or claiming U.S. citizenship.

It is tempting to think that this ugly history is behind us. Yet even a glance at current headlines makes it clear how deeply entrenched white-supremacist ideas about Americanness remain. The Trump Administration announced in 2019 that it would cut the number of refugees the U.S. will resettle in 2020 to no more than 18,000, the lowest number since the program was created 40 years ago. These refugees come principally from Asia, Africa and Latin America, which is to say they often come from countries the President has frequently disparaged. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, has long been an opponent of birthright citizenship and last fall told reporters that he doesn’t believe a constitutional amendment would be needed to end it. And Stephen Miller, the White House aide who has long echoed white-nationalist talking points and who is widely credited with being the architect of the Muslim ban, has pushed for sweeping changes to immigration laws that would favor people who speak English.

There are also rhetorical clues from this Administration and its supporters about who gets to be a “real” American. Last summer, Donald Trump called on Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib to “go back” to the “crime-infested places” from which they came. (All but Omar were born in the U.S.) More recently, conservative cable hosts like Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade insinuated that Alexander Vindman–an official at the National Security Council who testified that the President had asked the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival in exchange for military aid–might not be entirely loyal to the U.S. because he was an immigrant. It didn’t matter that Vindman was an active-duty officer in the U.S. Army; his allegiance was called into question.

Being American isn’t just a state of being, whether native or acquired. It’s a relationship between an individual and the nation-state. To be an American means, among other things, to have the right to vote in state and federal elections, to have protection from unreasonable searches, to be free to speak or worship or assemble without government interference. In the past, these rights, protections and liberties were not granted equally to all, and they still aren’t today. For instance, millions of formerly incarcerated people in states like Alabama, Kentucky, Florida and Mississippi have lost the right to vote and are therefore shut out of the democratic process. This has vastly disproportionate effects on black men. By comparison, Vermont and Maine, the two whitest states in the union, allow both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to vote. Citizenship is supposed to be an equalizer, yet in many ways it still functions as a tiered system that mirrors past racial hierarchies.

Four years ago, while I was visiting New York for a literary event, I took my daughter and niece to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a cloudy day in June, but the air was thick with humid heat. Both girls were excited about seeing the national landmarks; both undertook ancestry searches at the interactive exhibits. Although neither site was new to me any longer, I felt just as moved as the first time I’d seen them. There is something deeply seductive about these symbols. Even with the awareness of America’s history of colonial expansion and white supremacy, the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is still a potent lure.

I live with this contradiction every day, with the knowledge that the bleak past and the better future meet in the present moment. Citizenship is both an idea and an ideal, the journey from one to the other a measure of the nation’s progress. I wish this journey could be taken in a giant leap, even as I fear it will be walked slowly, fearfully, and with many steps back along the way. Yet I keep the faith. Perhaps it’s because I’m a novelist, whose work involves constant use of the imagination. Or perhaps it’s because I’m an immigrant, whose vantage point grants the privilege to look at the country from the inside and the outside. Either way, I know that promise is the best catalyst for progress.

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What is Citizenship?

It’s more than a national curriculum subject.

Citizenship involves people working together to make positive differences to the society in which they live – locally, nationally and globally. This process is good for individuals, and essential for strengthening and safeguarding our society and democratic way of life.

Citizenship education involves developing the knowledge, skills and confidence to enable people to make their own decisions and to take responsibility for their own lives and communities. And in many countries – where democratic society and its institutions are facing threats – citizenship education is becoming increasingly important.

At Young Citizens, we want young people to leave formal education with  a strong grasp of the political, legal and economic functions of society , and with the social and moral  awareness to thrive  in it.

Citizenship is a statutory subject on the national curriculum  in secondary schools in England, and it is one of the elements which is monitored by the schools regulator, Ofsted. It has been there since 2002.

But we don’t just want schools and colleges to teach citizenship: we also want them to  demonstrate citizenship  through the way they operate and the opportunities the give to young people.

Citizenship is more than a subject. If taught well and tailored to local needs, its skills and values will enhance democratic life for all of us, both rights and responsibilities, beginning in school and radiating out. Bernard Crick,  National Curriculum Citizenship , 1999

What are its essential elements?

Citizenship education involves a wide range of different elements of learning, including:

• Knowledge and understanding about topics such as laws and rules, the democratic process, the media, human rights, diversity, money and the economy, sustainable development and world as a global community; and about concepts such as democracy, justice, equality, freedom, authority and the rule of law
• Skills and aptitudes including critical thinking, analysing information, expressing opinions, taking part in discussions and debates, negotiating, conflict resolution and participating in community action
• Values and dispositions including respect for justice, democracy and the rule of law, openness, tolerance, courage to defend a point of view and a willingness to: listen to, work with and stand up for others.

The most effective form of learning in citizenship education is:

• active : emphasises learning by doing
• interactive : uses discussion and debate
• relevant : focuses on real-life issues facing young people and society
• critical : encourages young people to think for themselves
• collaborative : employs group work and co-operative learning
• participative : gives young people a say in their own learning.

Being able to understand our rights and ability to play a role within society, as well as how to shape it with confidence, is an essential skillset for any person in the 21st century. We need to ensure young people are equipped for growingly complex and dynamic social, economic, and civic issues of today and tomorrow. Citizenship is that skillset. Ashley Hodges, CEO, Young Citizens

Suggested Next Steps:

• Read more about why citizenship education is important .
• Find out more about a tool to measure your school’s success with SMSC .
• Get involved with our programmes .

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Background Essay: Rights, Equality, and Citizenship

Directions:

Keep these discussion questions in mind as you read the background essay, making marginal notes as desired. Respond to the reflection and analysis questions at the end of the essay.

Discussion Questions

• Is suffrage a right or a privilege?
• Is suffrage necessary for a person to be considered a citizen?
• Is legal equality necessary for liberty?
• Can a person be free if not equal under the law?

Introduction

What is equality? What is the connection between equality and citizenship? The principle of equality means that all individuals have the same status regarding their claim to natural rights and treatment before the law. Our definition of citizenship has expanded throughout American history, most often through claims to our natural equality. The story of women’s suffrage is an example of the patience, determination, and sacrifice necessary to carry out long term change within a constitutional order. The word, suffrage, meaning “the right to vote,” originated with the Latin suffragium, meaning “a vote cast in an assembly, or influence given in support of a candidate.”

The Declaration of Independence asserts as a self-evident truth that all people were created equal. Something “self-evident” is a plain truth that does not need to be proven through reasoned deduction from other principles. It is apparent immediately (or self-evident) to any reasonable observer that there are no natural differences among people which give one person or group of people (such as kings and queens) the power to rule over others without their consent. All have equal rights and dignity.

In his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), as part of an argument against slavery, English philosopher John Locke theorized that all people are born free: “The natural liberty of man [human beings] is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man [humans], but to have only the law of nature for his rule.”

Almost a century later, Samuel Adams quoted Locke regarding the natural liberty of man, agreeing that all people are created equally free; there are no natural rulers.

Equality and Natural Rights

Further, the Declaration asserts that it was “self-evident” that human beings were “endowed by their Creator” with certain rights. In the Founders’ view, since rights come from God, the creator of our human nature, an individual’s natural rights could be neither given nor taken away. They are, to use the Declaration’s word, unalienable

The term “natural” here refers to human nature. Natural rights are those rights humans have at birth, including life, liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and others. No person or government can “give” an individual these rights; they are part of what it means to be human. One can know natural rights are natural because they can all be exercised without requiring anything from others. Natural rights are sometimes called negative rights for this reason. They are also called inherent rights because they inhere in humanity: they are an essential characteristic of human nature.

Painting depicting Thomas Jefferson and his fellow committee members presenting their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress. Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, 1819. United States Capitol.

“Nobody Can Give More Power Than He Has Himself”

The assertion of inherent rights remains the foundation for the principle of equality. In the same argument against slavery, Locke reasoned:

“This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it…for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.”

In other words, Locke maintained, individual lives and the rights that flow from human nature belong to the Creator

Again, Adams echoes Locke in The Rights of the Colonists (1772):

“It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate [make void] such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”

Because humans are born with inherent rights, these rights are the same under any political system. An unjust government— including a tyrannical majority—may abuse or abridge the people’s inherent rights, but can never remove them, since these rights are essential to human nature.

But not all rights are inherent. Political rights, for example, may vary through times and places, because, unlike natural rights, they are given by government. Many political rights, including voting and serving on juries, have been expanded to more groups of people throughout American history through claims to natural and inherent equality. Although people use the term “rights” to refer to them, these rights conferred by civil society could more accurately be considered privileges—abilities that can be justly given or denied by government under certain conditions. For example, a driver’s license will be granted if a person passes a driving test, but can be revoked for drunk driving or too many accidents. A person can lose the ability to serve on a jury and to vote if convicted of a felony. People have inherent rights by nature, but must have permission in order to exercise a privilege.

Samuel Adams by John Singleton Copley, about 1772; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The U.S. Constitution

The Declaration asserted two more principles that were self-evident: that in order to secure our rights, “governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that when a government repeatedly abuses the peoples’ rights, the people have the power and the duty to “alter or abolish” it and create a new government that will better protect their rights and ensure their safety and happiness.

After a time under the Articles of Confederation, many observers recognized the need for a more powerful central government, giving rise to a convention of the states in 1787. The resulting new Constitution’s opening lines “We the people…ordain and establish this Constitution” outlined a government of limited powers, recognizing the sovereignty of the individual and protecting the natural right of the people to govern themselves.

With this right to self-government come many responsibilities. In fact, it could be argued that citizenship is more about responsibilities than about rights. Individuals are free to make choices about their government and direct their own lives within a system that guarantees the equal right (and responsibility) of others to do the same. The Constitution reflects the sovereignty of the individual, by limiting the national government to certain enumerated powers, leaving everything else to the states and to the people.

Theory vs. Practice

Despite the bold proclamation, the principle of equality was not meaningfully reflected in the lives of all people during the early republic. Enslaved persons and Native Americans were unable to exercise their inherent rights and were not afforded political rights. The Constitution sanctioned slavery both explicitly and implicitly: it gave Congress the power to ban the international slave trade, but mandated a 20-year waiting period before doing so. The Constitution also allowed slave states to count three-fifths of their enslaved population toward the calculation of those states’ representation in Congress. Though this compromise prevented slave states from having even greater power (they had wanted to count their entire slave populations), the policy tolerated the practice of owning and trading in human beings. Though many of the leading Founders were convinced of the evils and injustices of slavery, they did not end it in their lifetimes.

Women also lacked legal equality. Enslaved women and Native American women were denied all of their rights. Among white women, and depending on varying state laws, widows had some political rights and could own property, but married white women had no legal status at all under the traditional doctrine of coverture. The English jurist William Blackstone explained this doctrine in 1765. Through marriage, husband and wife become one person under the law: “the  very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything.”

The Constitution left voting requirements to the states, and so states could adopt different policies. Some states did away with property requirements but still required voters to be taxpayers. Some states required a tax to vote, or a poll tax. Vermont became the first state to grant universal male suffrage in 1777. New Jersey allowed property-owning white women and free African Americans to vote for a short time before that right was revoked in 1807.

Extending Equality

The Founding generation did not perfectly live out its ideal of equality. However, it provided a foundation for greater expansion of liberty through time. Through sustained effort and commitment over time, Americans have persistently appealed to Founding documents and their root principles to insist on changes that gradually recognized and protected both natural and civil rights.

The women’s suffrage movement provides a model for implementing social and legal change to better align institutions with principles of liberty, justice, and equality. The pathway for change was long. Seventy-two years passed between the Declaration of Independence assertion of self-evident and equal natural rights and the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, where women planned to “discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” In most parts of America in 1848 it was considered improper—even illegal—for women to speak in public meetings. Now they were convening one. It took another seventytwo years of struggle for women to achieve a constitutional amendment—the Nineteenth in 1920—protecting their right to vote, and guaranteeing their opportunity to participate more fully in the political process.

The Constitution contains the means to institute the meaningful changes required to bring it more in line with the governing principles on which it was founded. One of these methods is the amendment process, which is slow but effective. Reformers committed to equality and justice endured hardship and sacrifice to implement the amendment process to end slavery, and to grant the vote to black men, women, and people ages 18-21. Other methods of aligning the law with these principles, particularly equality, result from the system of checks and balances. The Supreme Court in 1954 checked the power of majorities in states when it ruled segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Congress has also invoked its enumerated powers to protect legal equality with laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Appeals to equality continue today as Americans debate the meaning of the principle as it applies to undocumented immigrants, the unborn, LGBTQ community members, disabled people, and many others.

REFLECTION AND ANALYSIS QUESTIONS

• On what basis did John Locke and Samuel Adams claim that slavery was unjust?
• List four truths the Declaration of Independence asserts are self-evident.
• What is a natural right?
• Should voting be considered a right or a privilege? Explain your choice.
• Do you agree with Locke that there are limits to what we can consent to? Does consent make any action good? Explain why or why not
• Some say that natural rights do not exist because so many governments have abused them throughout history. (Indeed, the Founders argued that the British King and Parliament were abusing theirs.) They say that if a right cannot be exercised effectively, it does not exist. Evaluate this assertion.
• The Founding generation did not fully live out its ideal of equality. Which ideals do people fail to live up to in modern times?
• Principles: equality, republican/representative government, popular sovereignty, federalism,inalienable rights
• Virtues: perseverance, contribution, moderation, resourcefulness, courage, respect, justice

• GlobalHigherEd

Global Citizenship – What Are We Talking About and Why Does It Matter?

By  Kris Olds

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Editor's note: This guest entry was written by Madeleine F. Green , a Senior Fellow at NAFSA and the International Association of Universities . It was originally published in NAFSA's newish Trends & Insights series of short online article that are "designed to highlight social, economic, political and higher education system trends affecting international higher education." Our thanks to Madeleine and NAFSA for permission to post her fascinating entry here (which is also available as a PDF via this link) . Kris Olds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

During the past decade higher education's interest in internationalization has intensified, and the concept of civic education or engagement has broadened from a national focus to a more global one, thus expanding the concept that civic responsibility extends beyond national borders.

As Schattle (2009) points out, the concept of global citizenship is not a new one; it can be traced back to ancient Greece. But the concept and the term seem to have new currency and are now widely used in higher education. Many institutions cite global citizenship in their mission statements and/or as an outcome of liberal education and internationalization efforts. Many have "centers for global citizenship" or programs with this label.

Additionally, national and international organizations and networks have devoted themselves to helping institutions promote global citizenship, although they do not necessarily use that term. For example, the Association of American Colleges and Universities sponsors a series of programs concerned with civic learning , a broad concept that includes several goals for undergraduate education: strengthening U.S. democracy, preparing globally responsible citizenry, developing personal and social responsibility, and promoting global learning and diversity. The Salzburg Seminar's International Study Program provides week-long workshops for faculty to consider the concepts of global citizenship and their integration into undergraduate education. It also provides college students with programs on global issues. The Talloires Network is an international alliance formed in 2005 that includes 202 institutions in 58 countries "devoted to strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education." The Talloires declaration refers specifically to "preparing students to contribute positively to local, national, and global communities." Founded in 1985, the oldest of these networks, Campus Compact , retains its predominant, but not exclusive, focus on the United States.

Defining Global Citizenship

A foray into the literature or a look at the many ways colleges and universities talk about global citizenship reveals how broad a concept it is and how different the emphasis can be depending on who uses the term. This essay can only outline a few important elements of global citizenship, but a brief overview of the many meanings should help institutions formulate or clarify their own definition of it, identify those elements that are central to their educational vision, and add other dimensions. The following are among the most salient features of global citizenship (this section draws from a variety of sources but primarily relies on Schattle (2007)).

Global citizenship as a choice and a way of thinking. National citizenship is an accident of birth; global citizenship is different. It is a voluntary association with a concept that signifies "ways of thinking and living within multiple cross-cutting communities—cities, regions, states, nations, and international collectives…" (Schattle 2007, 9). People come to consider themselves as global citizens through different formative life experiences and have different interpretations of what it means to them. The practice of global citizenship is, for many, exercised primarily at home, through engagement in global issues or with different cultures in a local setting. For others, global citizenship means firsthand experience with different countries, peoples, and cultures. For most, there exists a connection between the global and the local. Whatever an individual's particular "take" on global citizenship may be, that person makes a choice in whether or how to practice it.

Global citizenship as self-awareness and awareness of others. As one international educator put it, it is difficult to teach intercultural understanding to students who are unaware they, too, live in a culture that colors their perceptions. Thus, awareness of the world around each student begins with self-awareness. Self-awareness also enables students to identify with the universalities of the human experience, thus increasing their identification with fellow human beings and their sense of responsibility toward them.

Global citizenship as they practice cultural empathy . Cultural empathy or intercultural competence is commonly articulated as a goal of global education, and there is significant literature on these topics. Intercultural competence occupies a central position in higher education's thinking about global citizenship and is seen as an important skill in the workplace. There are more than 30 instruments or inventories to assess intercultural competence. Cultural empathy helps people see questions from multiple perspectives and move deftly among cultures—sometimes navigating their own multiple cultural identities, sometimes moving out to experience unfamiliar cultures.

Global citizenship as the cultivation of principled decisionmaking. Global citizenship entails an awareness of the interdependence of individuals and systems and a sense of responsibility that follows from it. Navigating "the treacherous waters of our epic interdependence (Altinay 2010, 4) requires a set of guiding principles that will shape ethical and fair responses. Although the goal of undergraduate education should not be to impose a "correct" set of answers, critical thinking, cultural empathy, and ethical systems and choices are an essential foundation to principled decisionmaking.

Global citizenship as participation in the social and political life of one's community. There are many different types of communities, from the local to the global, from religious to political groups. Global citizens feel a connection to their communities (however they define them) and translate that sense of connection into participation. Participation can take the form of making responsible personal choices (such as limiting fossil fuel consumption), voting, volunteering, advocacy, and political activism. The issues may include the environment, poverty, trade, health, and human rights. Participation is the action dimension of global citizenship.

Why Does Global Citizenship Matter?

The preceding list could be much longer and more detailed; global citizenship covers a lot of ground. Thus, it is useful to consider the term global citizenship as shorthand for the habits of mind and complex learning associated with global education. The concept is useful and important in several respects.

First, a focus on global citizenship puts the spotlight on why internationalization is central to a quality education and emphasizes that internationalization is a means, not an end. Serious consideration of the goals of internationalization makes student learning the key concern rather than counting inputs.

Second, the benefits of encouraging students to consider their responsibilities to their communities and to the world redound to them, institutions, and society. As Altinay (2010, 1) put it, "a university education which does not provide effective tools and forums for students to think through their responsibilities and rights as one of the several billions on planet Earth, and along the way develop their moral compass, would be a failure." Strengthening institutional commitment to serving society enriches the institution, affirms its relevance and contributions to society, and benefits communities (however expansive the definition) and the lives of their members.

Third, the concept of global citizenship creates conceptual and practical connections rather than cleavages. The commonalities between what happens at home and "over there" become visible. The characteristics that human beings share are balanced against the differences that are so conspicuous. On a practical level, global citizenship provides a concept that can create bridges between the work of internationalization and multicultural education. Although these efforts have different histories and trajectories, they also share important goals of cultural empathy and intercultural competence (Olson et al. 2007).

No concept or term is trouble-free; no idea goes uncontested by some faculty member or group. For better or for worse, global citizenship will undoubtedly provoke disagreements that reflect larger academic and philosophical debates. There is plenty of skepticism about global citizenship. Some object to any concept that suggests a diminished role for the nation and allegiance to it or the ascendancy of global governance systems. The idea of developing students' moral compasses can raise questions about whose values and morals and how institutions undertake this delicate task. Some students will choose not to accept responsibility for the fate of others far away, or may see inequality as an irremediable fact of life. Some faculty will stand by the efficacy and wisdom of the market; others will see redressing inequality as the key issue for the future of humankind. And so on.

Such debates, sometimes civil or acrimonious, are, for better or worse, the stuff of academe. Implementing new ideas—even if they have been around for a very long time as in the case of global citizenship—can be slow and painful. However, if colleges and universities can produce graduates with the knowledge and the disposition to be global citizens, the world would certainly be a better place.

Madeleine F. Green

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Box 1 - Conceptual Divides

What was once simply called “international education” is now a field awash with varied terminology, different conceptual frameworks, goals, and underlying assumptions.*

Although "internationalization" is widely used, many use globalization—with all its different definitions and connotations— in its stead. Rather than take on the job of sorting out the terminology, let me point out two significant conceptual divides in the conversation. Both center on the purpose of internationalization.

In the first divide, we see one face of internationalization as referring to a series of activities closely associated with institutional prestige, profile, and revenue. These activities are generally quantifiable, lend themselves to institutional comparisons and benchmarking, and provide metrics for internationalization performance that resonate with trustees and presidents. Examples include hosting international students, sending students abroad, developing international agreements, and delivering programs abroad.

The other face of internationalization—student learning— is much more difficult to capture and assess, but it provides an important answer to the “so what?” question. Why does internationalization matter? What impact do internationalization activities have on student learning? How do they contribute to preparing students to live and work in a globalized and culturally diverse world?

Different terms with overlapping meanings are used to describe the student learning dimension of internationalization. Global learning, global education, and global competence are familiar terms; they, too, are often used synonymously. The global in all three terms often includes the concepts of international (between and among nations), global (transcending national borders), and intercultural (referring often to cultural differences at home and around the world).

Also prevalent in the student learning discussion is another cluster of terms that focus specifically on deepening students’ understanding of global issues and interdependence, and encouraging them to engage socially and politically to address societal issues. These terms include global citizenship, world citizenship (Nussbaum 1997), civic learning, civic engagement, and global civics (Altinay 2010). These terms, too, share several key concepts, and are often used interchangeably.

The second divide focuses on the divergent, but not incompatible goals of workforce development (developing workers to compete in the global marketplace) or as a means of social development (developing globally competent citizens.) Global competitiveness is primarily associated with mastery of math, science, technology, and occasionally language competence, whereas “global competence” (a broad term, to be sure), puts greater emphasis on intercultural understanding and knowledge of global systems and issues, culture, and language.

As the field grows increasingly complex and the instrumental goals of internationalization become more prominent, it is important that campus discussions and planning efforts sort out their language, underlying concepts, and implied or explicit values. Otherwise, people run the risk of talking past each other and developing strategies that may not match their goals.

----------------------------------------

* It is important for U.S. readers to note that the goals of and assumptions about internationalization vary widely around the world. The Third Global Survey of Internationalization conducted by the International Association of Universities found that there are divergent views among institutions in different regions of the risks and benefits of internationalizations. Based on their findings, IAU has launched an initiative to take a fresh look at internationalization from a global perspective .

Altinay, Hakan. "The Case for Global Civics." Global Economy and Development Working Paper 35 , The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2010.

Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education . Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.

Olson, Christa, Rhodri Evans, and Robert Shoenberg. 2007. At Home in the World: Bridging the Gap Between Internationalization and Multi-Cultural Education . Washington DC: American Council on Education.

Schattle, Hans. 2007. The Practices of Global Citizenship . Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Schattle, Hans. 2009. "Global Citizenship in Theory and Practice." In The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship , ed. R. Lewin. New York: Routledge.

Teaching Markets and Morality

The need for students to consider the touch points between big moral questions and today’s political and financial is

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COMPASS Manual for Human Rights Education with Young people

Citizenship and participation.

• What is citizenship?

Traditions and approaches to citizenship vary throughout history and across the world according to different countries, histories, societies, cultures and ideologies, resulting in many different understandings of the concept of citizenship.

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. Aristotle

The origin of citizenship can be traced back to Ancient Greece, when "citizens" were those who had a legal right to participate in the affairs of the state. However, by no means was everyone a citizen: slaves, peasants, women or resident foreigners were mere subjects. For those who did have the privileged status of being citizens, the idea of "civic virtue" or being a "good" citizen was an important part of the concept, since participation was not considered only a right but also, and first of all, a duty. A citizen who did not meet his responsibilities was considered socially disruptive.

Citizenship is a complex and multi-dimensional reality which needs to be set in its political and historical context… . Democratic citizenship, specifically, refers to the active participation by individuals in the system of rights and responsibilities which is the lot of citizens in democratic societies. Consultation Meeting for the Education for Democratic Citizenship Programme of the Council of Europe, 1996

This concept of citizenship is reflected in today's most common understanding of citizenship as well, which relates to a legal relationship between the individual and the state. Most people in the world are legal citizens of one or another nation state, and this entitles them to certain privileges or rights. Being a citizen also imposes certain duties in terms of what the state expects from individuals under its jurisdiction. Thus, citizens fulfil certain obligations to their state and in return they may expect protection of their vital interests.

However, the concept of citizenship has far more layers of meaning than legal citizenship. Nowadays "citizenship" is much more than a legal construction and relates – amongst other things – to one's personal sense of belonging, for instance the sense of belonging to a community which you can shape and influence directly.

Such a community can be defined through a variety of elements, for example a shared moral code, an identical set of rights and obligations, loyalty to a commonly owned civilisation, or a sense of identity. In the geographical sense, "community" is usually defined at two main levels, differentiating between the local community, in which the person lives, and the state, to which the person belongs.

In the relationship between the individual and society we can distinguish four dimensions which correlate with the four subsystems which one may recognise in a society, and which are essential for its existence: the political / legal dimension, the social dimension, the cultural dimension and the economic dimension. 1

The social dimension of citizenship has to do with the behaviour between individuals in a society and requires some measure of loyalty and solidarity. Social skills and the knowledge of social relations in society are necessary for the development of this dimension.

The cultural dimension of citizenship refers to the consciousness of a common cultural heritage. This cultural dimension should be developed through the knowledge of cultural heritage, and of history and basic skills (language competence, reading and writing).

These four dimensions of citizenship are attained through socialisation processes which take place at school, in families, civic organisations, political parties, as well as through associations, mass media, the neighbourhood and peer groups. As with the four legs of a chair, each person should be able to exercise the four dimensions in a balanced and equal manner, otherwise full citizenship will be unbalanced.

Question: What senses of belonging do you recognise in yourself?

When we are part of a community, we can influence it, participate in its development and contribute to its well-being. Therefore, citizenship is also understood as a practice – the practice of playing an active role in our society. Such participation might be within our neighbourhood, in a formal or informal social group, in our country, or in the whole world. The notion of active citizenship implies working towards the betterment of one's community through participation to improve life for all members of the community. Democratic citizenship is a closely related concept, which emphasises the belief that citizenship should be based on democratic principles and values such as pluralism, respect for human dignity and the rule of law.

Question: Would you consider yourself an active citizen?

• Citizenship, participation and human rights

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. UDHR, article 27

Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to a nationality, a right to change one's nationality, and the right not to be deprived of nationality. The right to a nationality is confirmed in many other international instruments, including the European Convention on Nationality of the Council of Europe (1997). In the context of international norms, "nationality" and "citizenship" are usually used synonymously. This is true also for the Convention as underlined in its Explanatory Report 4 : nationality "…refers to a specific legal relationship between an individual and a State which is recognised by that State. …with regard to the effects of the Convention, the terms "nationality" and "citizenship" are synonymous".

The right to a nationality is extremely important because of its implications for the daily lives of individuals in every country. Being a recognised citizen of a country has many legal benefits, which may include – depending on the country – the rights to vote, to hold public office, to social security, to health services, to public education, to permanent residency, to own land, or to engage in employment, amongst others. Although each country can determine who its nationals and citizens are, and what rights and obligations they have, international human rights instruments pose some limitations on state sovereignty over citizenship regulation. Specifically, the universal human rights principle of non-discrimination and the principle that statelessness should be avoided constrain state discretion on citizenship.

Participation, in political and cultural life, is a fundamental human right recognised in a number of international human rights treaties, starting with Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides for the right to participate in government and free elections, the right to participate in the cultural life of the community, the right to peaceful assembly and association, and the right to join trade unions. Participation is also a core principle of human rights and is also a condition for effective democratic citizenship for all people.

Participation is one of the guiding principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This treaty says that children (all people below the age of eighteen years) have the right to have their voice heard when adults are making decisions that affect them, and their views should be given due weight in accordance with the child's age and maturity. They have the right to express themselves freely and to receive and share information. The Convention recognises the potential of children to influence decision making relevant to them, to share views and, thus, to participate as citizens and actors of change.

Without the full spectrum of human rights, participation becomes difficult if not impossible to access. Poor health, low levels of education, restrictions on freedom of expression, poverty, and so on, all impact on our ability to take part in the processes and structures which affect us and our rights. Equally, without participation, many human rights are difficult to access. It is participation through which we can build a society based on human rights, develop social cohesion, make our voice heard to influence decision makers, achieve change, and eventually be the subject and not the object of our own lives.

Question: What forms of involvement or participation, other than voting in elections, are possible for the ordinary citizen?

• Exercising citizenship

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. UDHR, article 21

Much discussion concerning citizenship is focused on the problem of increasing citizens' involvement and participation in the processes of democratic society. It is being increasingly realised that periodic voting by citizens is insufficient, either in terms of making those who govern in the interim period fully accountable or in promoting feelings of empowerment among ordinary citizens. Furthermore, low voting turnouts indicate levels of political apathy among the population, which seriously undermines the effective functioning of democracy.

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. UDHR, article 20

A second set of issues concerns the question of those individuals who do not, for one reason or another, receive the full benefits of citizenship. One aspect of this is a result of continuing patterns of discrimination within societies: minority groups may very often have formal citizenship of the country in which they are living but may still be prevented from full participation in that society.

A second aspect of the problem is a consequence of increasing globalisation, including new patterns of work and migration, which leads to a significant number of people throughout the world being resident abroad but unable to apply for formal citizenship. Such people may include immigrant workers, refugees, temporary residents or even those who have decided to set up permanent residence in another country.

Question: Should immigrant workers be entitled to some of the benefits of citizenship, if not to formal citizenship?

An estimated 70,000–80,000 Roma are stateless across 5 Europe.

A third aspect is the issue of statelessness. Although the right to a nationality is a human right guaranteed by international human rights law, there are millions of people worldwide who are not nationals of any country. The UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, estimates that there were 12 million stateless people at the end of 2010. Statelessness is often the result of the break-up of countries such as the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, but stateless people may also include displaced persons, expelled migrants, and those whose birth has not been registered with the authorities.

The idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: noone is against it in principle because it is good for you. 6 Sherry R. Arnstein

• Forms of participation

Participation of the citizens in their government is thought to be the cornerstone of democracy, and it can take place through different mechanisms and forms, and at various levels. Several models of participation have been developed, the earliest and probably the most well-known being Sherry Arnstein's ladder of participation (1969).

Arnstein identified eight levels of participation, each corresponding to one rung of the ladder, with little or no citizen participation at one end to a fully citizen-led form at the other. The higher you are on the ladder, the more power you have in determining the outcome. The bottom two rungs – manipulation and therapy – are not participative and should be avoided. The next three up – informing, consultation and placation – are tokenistic; they allow citizens to have a voice and be heard, but their views may not be properly considered by those in power. The final three steps – partnership, delegated power and citizen control – constitute real citizen power and the fullest form of citizen participation.

Rights versus reality Roma communities are routinely discriminated against in many parts of Europe. In some cases, Roma are denied citizenship of the countries in which they live. When Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, some Roma were left without nationality because the successor states regarded them as belonging elsewhere, and implemented legislation that denied them citizenship. Furthermore, Roma parents who are stateless or have migrated to another country often fail to have their children registered, even though such children are entitled to citizenship under international law. As a consequence, such children cannot access some of their fundamental rights such as health care or education. Other communities with itinerant lifestyles, for example the Travellers in Britain, may face similar problems. Even when Roma are formally recognised as citizens they may be excluded from fully participating in their communities and treated in practice like second-class citizens, due to widespread discrimination and prejudice.

States Parties recognize the rights of the child to freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly. Convention on the Rights of the Child

Arnstein's model was further developed by Roger Hart and adapted to the issue of children and youth participation. Hart stated that participation is a fundamental right of citizenship 7 , because this is the way to learn what being a citizen means and how to be one. Youth participation can also be seen as a form of a youth-adult partnership. There are different degrees to which youth can be involved or take over the responsibility, depending on the local situation, resources, needs and level of experience. Hart's ladder of participation illustrates different degrees of involvement of children and young people in projects, organisations or communities. These are the eight levels of youth involvement:

The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. Baha'ullah

Rung 8: Shared decision making Projects or ideas are initiated by young people, who invite the adults to take part in the decision-making process as partners.

Rung 7: Young-people led and initiated Projects or ideas are initiated and directed by young people; the adults might be invited to provide necessary support, but a project can be carried out without their intervention.

Rung 6: Adult initiated, shared decisions with young people Projects are initiated by adults but young people are invited to share the decision-making power and responsibilities as equal partners.

Rung 5: Young people consulted and informed Projects are initiated and run by adults, but young people provide advice and suggestions and are informed as to how these suggestions contribute to the final decisions or results.

Rung 4: Young people assigned but informed Projects are initiated and run by adults; young people are invited to take some specific roles or tasks within the project, but they are aware of what influence they have in reality.

Participation means to be involved, to have tasks and to share and take over responsibility. It means to have access and to be included. Peter Lauritzen 3

Rung 3: Tokenism Young people are given some roles within projects but they have no real influence on any decisions. There is a false appearance created (on purpose or unintentionally) that young people participate, when in fact they do not have any choice about what is being done and how.

Rung 2: Decoration Young people are needed in the project to represent youth as an underprivileged group. They have no meaningful role (except from being present) and, as with decorations, they are put in a visible position within a project or organisation, so that they can be easy for outsiders to spot.

There are many ways in which young people play an active role as citizens of their societies. In 2011, a survey of young people aged between 15 and 30 living in EU member states was conducted to find out how young EU citizens are participating in society. It focused on their participation in organisations (e.g. sports clubs, voluntary organisations), political elections, voluntary activities and projects fostering co-operation with young people in other countries.Rung 1: Manipulation Young people are invited to take part in the project, but they have no real influence on decisions and the outcomes. In fact, their presence is used to achieve some other goals, such as winning local elections, creating a better picture of an institution or securing some extra funds from institutions supporting youth participation.

The findings included the following:

• Across all countries, a minority of young people said they had been involved in activities aimed at fostering co-operation with young people from other countries; this ranged from 4% in Italy to 16% in Austria.
• About a quarter of young adults had been involved in an organised voluntary activity in 2010. The highest rates were observed in Slovenia, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands (36%-40%).
• Among young people who were old enough to vote, roughly 8 in 10 said that they had voted in a political election at the local, regional, national or EU level in the previous three years. This ranged from 67% in Luxembourg to 93% in Belgium (where voting is compulsory).
• Roughly a third of young people in the EU had been active in a sports club in 2010. About a sixth had been involved in a youth organisation and one in seven had participated in a cultural organisation's activities. 8

Question: How can you make your voice heard in your youth group, organisation or school?

• Youth participation in the Council of Europe

The aim of the Council of Europe's youth policy is to provide young people -  girls and boys, young women and young men -  with equal opportunities and experience which enable them to develop the knowledge, skills and competencies to play a full part in all aspects of society. 9

The Council of Europe plays a major role in supporting and encouraging participation and active citizenship. Participation is central to the Council's youth policy in various ways:

Participation and active citizenship is about having the right, the means, the space and the opportunity and, where necessary, the support to participate in and influence decisions and engage in actions and activities so as to contribute to building a better society. Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life

• Youth policies should promote the participation of young people in the various spheres of society, especially those that are most directly relevant to them. This includes support for youth organisations, setting youth platforms or consultative bodies, recognising the role of students' councils and students' unions in the management of schools, and so on.
• Youth policies should be developed, implemented and evaluated with young people, namely through ways that take into account the priorities, perspectives and interests of young people and involve them in the process. This may be done through youth councils and fora (national, regional or local) or/and through other ways of consulting young people, including forms of e-participation.
• Youth policies and programmes should encourage participant-centred approaches to learning and action, such as in human rights education, through which participants exert and learn participation and citizenship.

The European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life 11 (produced in 1992 and revised in 2003) is an international policy document approved by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The Charter consists of three parts relating to different aspects of youth participation at a local level. The first provides local and regional authorities with guidelines on how to conduct policies affecting young people in a number of areas. The second part provides the tools for furthering the participation of young people. Finally, the third section provides advice on how to provide institutional conditions for the participation of young people.

Have your Say! is the Council of Europe's Manual on the Revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life 12 , available online in 11 languages.

The charter outlines 14 areas in which young people should be involved. They are the following: 1. sport, leisure and associative life 2. work and employment 3. housing and transport 4. education and training 5. mobility and intercultural exchanges 6. health 7. equality for women and men 8. young people in rural areas 9. access to culture 10. sustainable development and environment 11. violence and crime 12. anti-discrimination 13. love and sexuality 14. access to rights and law.

In a unique manner to implement youth participation in youth policy, the Council of Europe has introduced a co-management system into its youth sector, where representatives of European non-governmental youth organisations and government officials work together to develop priorities for and make recommendations concerning youth. This co-management system consists of three bodies: the European Steering Committee for Youth , the Advisory Council on Youth and the Joint Council on Youth . The Advisory Council is made up of 30 representatives from youth NGOs and networks, who provide opinions and input on all youth sector activities. It has the task of for¬ mulating opinions and proposals on any question concerning youth, within the scope of the Council of Europe. The European Steering Committee for Youth (CDEJ) consists of representatives of ministries and organisations responsible for youth matters from the states parties to the European Cultural Convention. It encourages closer co-operation between governments on youth issues and provides a forum for comparing national youth policies, exchanging best practices and drafting standard texts. The CDEJ also organises the Conferences of European Ministers with responsibility for youth matters and drafts youth policy laws and regulations in member states. The Joint Council on Youth brings the CDEJ and the Advisory Council together in a co-decision body, which establishes the youth sector's priorities, objectives and budgets.

The European Youth Forum The European Youth Forum is an independent, democratic, youth-led platform, representing over 90 national youth councils and international youth organisations from across Europe. The Youth Forum works to em-power young people to participate actively in society to improve their own lives, by representing and advocating their needs and interests and those of their organisations. 13

1 These four dimensions of Citizenship were developed by Ruud Veldhuis, in "Education for Democratic Citizenship: Dimensions of Citizenship, Core Competencies, Variables and International Activities", Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 1997, document DECS/CIT (97) 23, quoted here from T-Kit 7 – Under Construction, T-Kit on European Citizenship, Council of Europe and European Commission, Strasbourg, 2003 2  T-Kit 7 – Under Construction, T-Kit on European Citizenship, Council of Europe and European Commission, Strasbourg, 2003 3 Peter Lauritzen, keynote speech on participation presented at the training course on the development of and implementation of participation projects at local and regional level, European Youth Centre, June 2006 4 Explanatory Report to the European Convention on Nationality, Article 2, para. 23: http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/reports/html/166.htm#FN2 5 Megan Rowling quoting Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in: "Rights Chief urges Europe to make stateless Roma citizens", AlertNet 23 August 2011: www.trust.org/alertnet/news/interview-eu-governments-should-give-stateless-roma-citizenship-commissioner 6 Sherry R. Arnstein, "A Ladder of Citizen Participation", JAIP, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1969, p 216. 7 Roger Hart, Children's Participation: from Tokenism to Citizenship, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, 1992 8 "Youth on the Move", Analytical Report, European Commission, May 2011 http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_319a_en.pdf 9 Resolution of the Committee of Ministers (2008)23 on the youth policy of the Council of Europe 10 Have Your Say!, Manual on the revised European Charter on the Participation of Young People in Local and Regional Life, Council of Europe Publishing, 2008 11 The Charter is available here: www.salto-youth.net/downloads/4-17-1510/Revised%20European%20Charter%20on%20the%20Participation%20of%20YP.pdf 12 www.coe.int/t/dg4/youth/Source/Coe_youth/Participation/Have_your_say_en.pdf 13 Learn more on the European Youth Forum website: www.youthforum.org

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1 Citizenship and Civic Engagement: An Introduction

• Published: December 2014
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This chapter introduces the concepts of citizenship and civic engagement. A critical element of both concepts is the notion of active citizenship, in which individuals are actively involved in the life of their country and community through participation in things such as volunteering, neighborhood organizations, or political work. The chapter discusses why such involvements are important for the well-being of individuals and communities and provides examples of how theory and research in different areas of psychology, such as developmental psychology, community psychology, and social psychology, can inform our understanding of citizenship and civic engagement. The chapter presents an integrative theory that considers the factors that initiate civic participation and those that sustain it, from both an individual and systems perspective. The chapter ends with a description of how the book is organized and the key values and perspectives that the author brings to bear on the subject.

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• Our work with schools
• What is global citizenship?
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Photo: Andy Aitchison/Oxfam

Oxfam education

Ideas, resources and support for active global citizenship in the classroom and beyond.

What is Global Citizenship?

Global citizenship is the term for social, environmental, and economic actions of individuals and communities who recognise that every person is a citizen of the world.

It is about how decisions in one part of the planet can affect people living in a different part of it, and about how we all share a common humanity and are of equal worth.

It means being open to engaging positively with other identities and cultures and being able to recognise and challenge stereotypes.

It is also about how we use and share the earth's resources fairly and uphold the human rights of all.

What does it mean to be a global citizen?

A global citizen is someone who is aware of and understands the wider world – and their place in it. They are a citizen of the world. They take an active role in their community and work with others to make our planet more peaceful, sustainable and fairer.

Examples of global citizenship

Global citizenship involves...

• Exploring local and global connections and our views, values and assumptions
• Exploring issues of social justice locally and globally
• Exploring the complexity of global issues and engaging with multiple perspectives
• Applying learning to real-world issues and contexts
• Opportunities to make informed, reflective action and be heard

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

For Oxfam, global citizenship is all about encouraging young people to develop the knowledge, skills and values they need to engage with the world. And it's about the belief that we can all make a difference.

Education for global citizenship isn't an additional subject – it's a framework for learning, reaching beyond school to the wider community. It can be promoted in class through the existing curriculum or through new initiatives and activities.

BENEFITS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

Global citizenship helps young people to:

• Build their own understanding of world events.
• Think about their values and what's important to them.
• Take learning into the real world.
• Challenge ignorance and intolerance.
• Get involved in their local, national and global communities.
• Develop an argument and voice their opinions.
• See that they have power to act and influence the world around them.

What's more, global citizenship inspires and informs teachers and parents, too. But above all, it shows young people that they have a voice. The world may be changing fast, but they can make a positive difference – and help build a fairer, safer and more secure world for everyone.

Photo: John Mclaverty / Oxfam

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Photo: Andy Aitchison/Oxfam.

Practical advice and inspiration for embedding global citizenship in the curriculum and across the whole school.

Active global citizenship

Beyond the classroom, we give young people lots of ways to take action for a better world.

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Also in this section

• Jul 21, 2022

What is Global Citizenship and Why is it Important?

Can you think back to high school when you had the opportunity to go on that language exchange program but instead you spent that week riding your bike around your neighborhood trails and playing video games. Maybe for lack of resources or maybe lack of interest, either way when those kids came back they seemed to have learned more than just a language. They learned a new way of living, acting, being.

So why were those cultural experiences so important? And how might that have been the beginning of shaping global citizens?

The lessons you learn from traveling abroad, immersing yourself in other cultures, trying to communicate and become accepted by a new group of people is nothing short of life changing. One learns a new set of skills, a new ability to adapt to unknown situations and question one’s own reality.

Table of Contents:

​​ What Are the Values of Global Citizenship?

Why Is It Important to Be a Global Citizen?

How do you become a global citizen, where do you stand.

This is the beginning of a cultural awareness that shapes global citizens . The aim of global citizenship is nothing short of “nurturing respect for all, building a sense of belonging to a common humanity and helping learners become responsible and active global citizens.” UN

In the essay “Global Citizenship: What Are We Talking About and Why Does It Matter?” Madeleine F. Green, Ph.D. writes, “National citizenship is an accident of birth; global citizenship is different. It is a voluntary association.”

To be a global citizen means to have:

cultural empathy

a passion for engaging with people from different backgrounds

to be adaptable to different experiences and environments

And an appreciation for diversity.

When you are a global citizen, you possess a dedication to addressing the world's collective concerns, such as climate change and biases like racism.

When we begin to understand and acknowledge our place within the world around us - including our privileges, our experiences and how our actions can affect global events in both small and notable ways, we are gradually transforming ourselves into becoming global citizens.

Global Citizenship gives us an opportunity to explore different experiences, ideologies, and cultures while still recognizing the uniqueness of our own culture.

​​​​What Are the Values of Global Citizenship?

According to UNESCO, it “aims to instill in learners the values, attitudes and behaviours that support responsible global citizenship: creativity, innovation, and commitment to peace, human rights and sustainable development.”

Let’s focus on human rights for a moment. As a global citizen who is aware of the human rights abuses across the globe and in one’s own backyard, one could easily connect the dots to movements like anti-racism education and awareness as an area global citizens would excel at. So the question begs, are global citizens by default anti-racist?

Being anti-racist simply means you understand that racism is real, not just in America and in Canada, but in any one of the numerous multicultural countries in the World. It may look and feel different, but it rears its ugly head at the best of times when opportunities are ripe, and the worst of times like war time hysteria.

So what does being a global citizen have to do with being anti-racist? Once you know this truth, and begin to find ways to reduce the negative effects of racism through consistent work to demolish racist structures, one could say you’re anti-racist.

Being a Global Citizen can be powerful, because a globally-minded individual who takes political, social, environmental and economic actions is going to impact communities on a world wide scale.

For example, while the United States holds the title of the democratic nation of the world, it is founded on white supremacy . The inferred implication of that is systemic racism; presented like a thread sewn into every facet of America’s society. Think health care, education, housing, and wealth distribution. The Black, Indigenous, Asian and coloured communities face microaggressions and more overt forms of racism throughout their lives.

It’s a painful fact, and the reason you would find marches and protests against actions that — sometimes — look like they were obviously targeted at undermining the humanity of non-white heritage.

Anti-black racism is one of the many biases someone who thinks and acts like a global citizen would be aware of and working to resolve, because the ideas presented by global citizenship are meant to be empowering and equitable for all. Thinking and viewing the world beyond the confines of your — sometimes — limited experiences has proven for many to be a fruitful idea.

While learning about other cultures is an excellent recipe for becoming a true global citizen , there’s more. Absorbing new experiences, language, traditions, and culture of people in other parts of the world, is what helps you get there.

So, the big question becomes how can you gain the opportunities that provide you access to that learning, that lifestyle?

During conversations like this, “travel” is a word that comes up a lot — and rightly so.

Think about this. How else can you meet new people of varying cultural experiences, and get a rich initiation into their way of life without actually living it?

However, some would argue differently and tell you that technology provides a way to become a global citizen through online meet-up opportunities.

That argument holds only a little worth. Because through close inspection it’s simple to see how behind-the-screen experiences do not give you a true picture of how people live, how and what they eat, how they celebrate events, and how your thought process and conclusions are different even in common, similar situations, among other things.

To put it simply, if you want to get a new perspective, you have to experience something from a different vantage point. Take yourself out of your normal environment in order to perceive the world differently.

Are you ready to make such a commitment to yourself? You must be able to make continual attempts to comprehend diverse elements and opinions that might impact our lives on a global scale. Global citizenship is a way of life, a thought process from a global perspective, but also a tool to gain more freedom. Many use global citizenship to minimize the restraints one country has on them and gain one's liberties and financial autonomy by moving around more.

And others believe it is the fullest way of living - open to embrace what the world has to offer, and willing to sacrifice in order to protect it.

Let’s talk about it in our next Tough Convos. Sign up here or set up a call and we can develop a custom experience for your team.

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Article contents

Global citizenship.

• April R. Biccum April R. Biccum School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.556
• Published online: 19 November 2020

The concept of “Global Citizenship” is enjoying increased currency in the public and academic domains. Conventionally associated with cosmopolitan political theory, it has moved into the public domain, marshaled by elite actors, international institutions, policy makers, nongovernmental organizations, and ordinary people. At the same time, scholarship on Global Citizenship has increased in volume in several domains (International Law, Political Theory, Citizenship Studies, Education, and Global Business), with the most substantial growth areas in Education and Political Science, specifically in International Relations and Political Theory. The public use of the concept is significant in light of what many scholars regard as a breakdown and reconfiguration of national citizenship in both theory and practice. The rise in its use is indicative of a more general change in the discourse on citizenship. It has become commonplace to offer globalization as a cause for these changes, citing increases in regular and irregular migration, economic and political dispossession owing to insertion in the global economy, the ceding of sovereignty to global governance, the pressure on policy caused by financial flows, and cross-border information-sharing and political mobilization made possible by information communications technologies (ICTs), insecurities caused by environmental degradation, political fragmentation, and inequality as key drivers of change. Global Citizenship is thus one among a string of adjectives attempting to characterize and conceptualize a transformative connection between globalization, political subjectivity, and affiliation. It is endorsed by elite global actors and the subject of an educational reform movement. Some scholarship observes empirical evidence of Global Citizenship, understood as active, socially and globally responsible political participation which contributes to global democracy, within global institutions, elites, and the marginalized themselves. Arguments for or against a cosmopolitan sensibility in political theory have been superseded by both the technological capability to make global personal legal recognition a possibility, and by the widespread endorsement of Global Citizenship among the Global Education Policy regime. In educational scholarship Global Citizenship is regarded as a form of contemporary political being that needs to be socially engineered to facilitate the spread of global democracy or the emergence of new political arrangements. Its increasing currency among a diverse range of actors has prompted a variety of attempts either to codify or to study the variety of usages in situ. As such the use of Global Citizenship speaks to a central methodological problem in the social sciences: how to fix key conceptual variables when the same concepts are a key aspect of the behavior of the actors being studied? As a concept, Global Citizenship is also intimately associated with other concepts and theoretical traditions, and is among the variety of terms used in recent years to try to reconceptualize changes it the international system. Theoretically it has complex connections to cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and republicanism; empirically it is the object of descriptive and normative scholarship. In the latter domain, two central cleavages repeat: the first is between those who see Global Citizenship as the redress for global injustices and the extension of global democracy, and those who see it as irredeemably capitalist and imperial; the second is between those who see evidence for Global Citizenship in the actions and behavior of a wide range of actors, and those who seek to socially engineer Global Citizenship through educational reform.

• globalization
• global governance
• cosmopolitanism
• citizenship
• global civil society

What is Global Citizenship?

Global Citizenship (hereafter GC) as a concept is enjoying some currency in the public and academic domains. The theory and study of GC has been a growth industry especially in philosophy, international relations, and education, and it has been adopted as a central educational reform under the Sustainable Development Goals and endorsed by major international organizations, think tanks, and the expanded regime of Global Education Policy (Mundy, 2016 ). What is meant by GC varies between political actors and academics. The academic literature on GC divides into two branches. The normative theoretical branch has a number of overlaps and engagements with cosmopolitan, liberal, and republican political theory. The empirical scholarship, meanwhile, observes GC’s existence in individual behavior and the structures of transnational organization; in the case of education, empirical scholarship offers ways and means of producing GC through a reform of pedagogy, curriculum, and educational design. It is commonplace to begin any discussion of GC with an account of cosmopolitan political theory dating back to the ancients. The problem with this account is that these theoretical arguments for and against GC have been superseded both by its increasingly widespread use among political actors and by the technological capability to make it something of an institutional reality. GC is no longer simply a theoretical or philosophical discussion but is increasingly also a diversified field of empirical study. The problem with the study of GC empirically is that it is one of those conceptual variables that cuts across scholarship and public use. It is a concept, according to Reinhart Koselleck’s understanding of that term, in that it is an inherently contestable carrier of signification with multiple meanings (Koselleck, 2002 ).

What is true of GC is equally true of citizenship. Both are used by political actors and institutions, and also by academics, to inform empirical study; they are equally both concepts that inform normative political theory about the ordering foundations of society. They thus straddle the distance near (ordinary usage), distance far (academic and technocratic usage), and the normative theoretical of both political actors and academics (other conceptual variables with a similar bifurcation are democracy and the state) (Ferguson & Mansbach, 2010 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). This entanglement speaks to methodological problems at the heart of all social science endeavor: the use of the same concepts by political actors, institutions, and academics; and the problem of trying to fix those concepts for the purposes of advancing knowledge, or equally, trying to elaborate them philosophically for the purposes of creating social change. In the case of both citizenship and GC, the attempt to use various methodological techniques to fix their meaning and tie them to concrete empirical phenomena (Sartori, 1984 ) is unproductive because all these concepts are quintessential examples of the fact that political actors are themselves also self-conscious conceptualizers. Moreover, the way GC is conceptualized by certain political actors is currently having concrete political outcomes (Biccum, 2018b , 2020 ). Trying to improve its study by using Sartori’s ladder of abstraction to parse it into conceptual precision will not do when conceptualization is itself an integral part of its political impact and institutionalization. Moreover, there is increasing overlap between academic scholarship and the concept’s political operationalization, particularly in education.

Interpretive social science offers a way of grappling with this complexity by recognizing what a concept is (i.e., the function in language that allows for multiplicity of meaning and abstraction) (Koselleck, 2002 ), the ubiquity of the use of concepts for all language users (Geertz, 1973 ), and methodological techniques that are consistent with the properties of language and its study in use (Fairclough, 1989 ; Schaffer, 2016 ). The interpretivist approach is more appropriate for fleshing out the complexity of defining GC by recognizing that the rise in its use both academically and politically is in response to changing circumstances, but also and concurrently that its take up is an attempt to by actors to change political circumstances. The interpretivist approach equips scholars with a sensitivity for assessing how and why GC’s use is significant. GC is one among a variety of adjectival variations on citizenship, but it is one that has taken greater hold than any of its rivals and, depending on who uses it and how, has implications for a shift in identity and allegiance from the national to the global. Therefore, its increased use by elites and operationalization in policy to affect change should be recognized as politically significant. Interpretive social science provides the analytical and methodological tools to ground, locate, and elucidate the various meanings of GC in theory and in practice (Schaffer, 2016 ).

Citizenship, as a concept, is also both a variably applied political institution and a contested theoretical concept. It emerged as a body of study in its own right in the 20th century only to be problematized toward the end of the century with a variety of qualifying adjectives, including postnational citizenship (Rose, 1996 ), the denationalization of citizenship (Soysal, 1994 ), extrastatal citizenship (Lee, 2014 ), cultural citizenship (Richardson, 1998 ), minority citizenship (Yuval-Davis, 1997 ), ecological citizenship (van Steenbergen, 1994 ), cosmopolitan citizenship (Held, 1995 ), consumer citizenship (Stevenson, 1997 ), and mobility citizenship (Urry, 1990 ). The meaning and theorization of citizenship itself in the context of globalization have undergone some considerable contestation. In the late 1990s, sociologist John Urry noted the contradiction that just as everyone is seeking to be a citizen of an existing national society, globalization is changing what it means to be a citizen (Urry, 1999 ). For some theorists of citizenship, it has normative dimensions. Brian Turner in particular made a distinction between a conservative view of citizenship as passive and private, and a more revolutionary idea of citizenship as active and public (Bowden, 2003 ; Turner, 1990 ). For theorists of citizenship it is a mode of political membership that has as a performative nature, even by those who are not officially recognized. Understood this way, it is a quintessentially democratic political subjectivity, where agency is expressed in struggles for rights and inclusion for the benefit of self and others.

Historicized as an actually existing political institution, citizenship can be shown to be a mechanism of differentiation through rights allocation, inclusion, and exclusion that is unavoidably connected to state and imperial violence, interest, and power. For critical scholars, it is gendered, racialized, and colonial and has been a mechanism not for the expansion of civil, political, and social rights (as canonized in Marshall’s 1949 account) but as a means of conferring those rights on the few (Isin & Nyers, 2014b ; Marshall, 1949 ). Editors of the Routledge Handbook of GC Studies survey the various ways in which national citizenship has been conceptualized and how Citizenship Studies must be revised in light of globalization (Isin & Nyers, 2014b ; Lee, 2014 ). A work in “critical Citizenship Studies,” this volume notes that citizenship has been defined as membership, status, practice, or performance, with each definition harboring presumptions about politics and agency. To overcome these shortcomings, the editors offer a minimal definition which contains conceptual complexity. For Isin and Nyers, citizenship is “an institution, mediating rights between the subjects of politics and the polity” (Isin & Nyers, 2014a , p. 1). The word “polity” enables a conceptualization of diverse political entities and overlapping governance configurations. “Rights mediation” recognizes that citizenship is inclusive and exclusive simultaneously and that it is most often expanded through political struggle. Finally, the “Subject” is a way of understanding political behavior on the part of people with no formal institutional recognition. The volume aims to address the fact that Citizenship Studies is globalizing because people around the world are articulating their struggles through the political institution of citizenship, and they see this struggle as the performative dimension or enactment of citizenship in political behavior that makes claims upon states and governing institutions. This is why scholars are engaged in “a competition to invent new names to describe the political subjects that are enacting political agency today. Whether it is the Activist or the Actant, the Militant or the Multitude” (Isin & Nyers, 2014a , p. 5). Contributors to this volume are highly skeptical of the concept of GC, but this is precisely the kind of active enactment of rights and responsibilities that scholars of GC see as evidence of its existence, or endorsement for its contribution to the globalization of democracy. Thus, the emergence of GC is part and parcel of the very contestation over citizenship that contributors to this volume see as evidence for grassroots political agency and democratic political change.

As a concept, GC is often linked with the body of cosmopolitan political thought dating back to antiquity (Heater, 1996 ), but this association needs to be qualified. Its increased usage in the early 21st century among scholars, philosophers, policymakers, global institutions, and educators has been prolific, leading to several attempts in the literature to codify its various meanings (Fanghanel & Cousin, 2012 ; Hicks, 2003 ; Sant, Davies, Pashby, & Shultz, 2018 ), or to study its variation in use empirically (Gaudelli, 2009 ). Some have argued that its conceptual heterogeneity is strategically advantageous for those who are using it in practice, and political actors particularly in education have devoted a substantial amount of time to conceptualizing it for the purposes of its articulation in policy (Biccum, 2018b ; Hartmeyer, 2015 ). In the education space, an agreed-upon meaning organized around attitudes, aptitudes, and behavior is now being utilized by international organizations (specifically the United Nations, United Nations Education Science and Culture Organisation, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), which are disseminating their preferred definitions through the expanded global education community via declarations, policy advice, research, information portals, and international conferences. Attempts to codify the different meanings of GC in the academic scholarship have used different metatheoretical concepts to understand the systematic organization of meaning, among them heuristics (Gaudelli, 2009 ), discourse (Karlberg, 2008 ; Parmenter, 2011 ; Schattle, 2015 ; Shukla, 2009 ), ideology (Pais & Costa, 2017 ; Schattle, 2008 ), and typology (Andreotti, 2014 ; Oxley & Morris, 2013 ). For all this definitional and metatheoretical categorization, what cuts across all are the notions that a global citizen is a type of person (endowed with a certain kind of knowledge, values, attitudes, and aptitudes) and that GC is expressed in behavior (always active). Oxley and Morris’s ( 2013 ) codification is often cited in educational scholarship that is working to provide the pedagogical and theoretical foundations for producing Global Citizens (Bosio & Torres, 2019 ) or critically contesting existing practices and theoretical models of GC education in order to make them live up to what both scholarly factions regard as its emancipatory potential (Andreotti, 2014 ).

The various attempts to codify the use of GC in situ tend to make a distinction between hegemonic use and attempts by both scholars and political actors to expand its meaning for political purposes. In this context Oxley and Morris ( 2013 ) make a distinction between “cosmopolitan based” GC Education, which is further nuanced by political, moral, economic, and cultural considerations; and “advocacy based,” which is inflected by social, critical, environmental, and spiritual features. This distinction effectively codifies the differences between official uses of GC by elite actors, and the contestations from critical practitioners and scholars who seek to expand its official meaning (a) to include the grassroots activity of activists; and (b) in educational policy and practice, to include knowledge of global capital and European colonial history, a normative attitude against the inequalities and injustices these have produced, and the aptitude to hold elite actors to account (Andreotti & Souza, 2011 ). Gaudelli ( 2009 ) and Schattle ( 2008 ) based their discursive and ideological codifications on methodologically informed definitions of discourse and ideology and an empirical focus on the use of the concept in multiple sites. Gaudelli identifies five different discursive framings (neoliberal, nationalist, Marxist, world justice and governance, and cosmopolitan), and Schattle ( 2008 ) deploys an ideological analysis to determine whether the discourse of GC in education constitutes a new “globalist” ideology. He finds that in fact it remains inflected by varieties of liberal ideology, even its critical variants, because of its emphasis on human rights, equality, and social justice.

Despite contestations over meaning and use, there are those in the literature who regard GC as the conceptual iteration that underpins a hegemonic ordering of a global governance to further globalize the market by creating market-ready “neoliberal subjectivities” (Chapman, Ruiz-Chapman, & Eglin, 2018 ), or who argue that the proselytizing gesture of its proponents and its rootedness in Western liberal democratic culture make it inescapably imperial (Andreotti & Souza, 2011 ). A common accusation is that GC is an attempt to put a progressive veneer on the global market. In addition, definitions of GC that link it to worldly cosmopolitan values, high-tech skills, and enough cross-cultural knowledge to enable flexibility and adaptability map neatly onto the kinds of subjectivities one will find among the world’s most privileged and highly mobile workers. For critics, there is evidence for this critique in the individualizing and entrepreneurial programs which make elites responsible for limited social change that won’t disrupt market relations. Conversely, the neorepublican and neoliberal response to this critique is that citizenship is inseparable from market-based participation in society because it is the market’s tendency to untether people from social, political, and economic constraints and to diversify the economy that creates free rational agents capable of participating democratically (Lovett & Pettit, 2009 ). From this perspective, chauvinism, discrimination, and communitarianism are bad for global markets, ergo the promotion of the progressive social values of GC is good for the global economy. The critics of GC are quite right in that it is being articulated and reframed to fit the particular ideological commitments of promarket actors in certain sites (Chapman et al., 2018 ; Pais & Costa, 2017 ). However, paying close empirical attention to how conceptualization works, what should be emphasized is that GC’s heterogeneity, fluidity, and contested meaning ensure that it cannot be dismissed as essentially one thing and serving a single purpose (Biccum, 2020 ). Instead, close empirical attention needs to be paid to who is using it, how, and for what purpose.

The Theory of GC

It is commonplace to want to tell the story of GC as the next step in the genealogy of the cosmopolitan tradition. But the picture is more complex than that, because while both cosmopolitanism and GC have close family ties with liberal political theory, it is a mistake to collapse them because there are articulations of liberalism which reject cosmopolitanism, such as the work of John Rawls. Equally, in GC’s associations with antiquity there are concrete connections also with republican political thought (Pagden, 2000 ). In fact, republicanism has equally enjoyed a revival since the 1990s (Costa, 2009 ; Dagger, 2006 ; Lovett & Pettit, 2009 ) and, when examined in detail, the approach to the market found in elite articulations of GC do bear a closer affinity with neorepublicanism than, as critics maintain, neoliberalism (Biccum, 2020 ). The work of Luis Cabrera argues for maintaining a distinction between cosmopolitanism and GC while understanding their connections (Cabrera, 2008 ). Succinct political theories of GC have emerged (Carter, 2001 ; Dower, 2000 ; Tully, 2014 ), some of which try to counter this tradition and some of which marshal GC as a suitable replacement for aggressive American militarism (Arneil, 2007 ; Hunter, 1992 ), arguing that it will allow the United States to pass an “Augustan Threshold.” However articulated theoretically, GC is intimately tied up with questions of human nature, political subjectivity, and appropriate political arrangements, such as polis, state, republic, global governance, world state or empire, with a characteristic omission of political arrangements deemed less formal or “modern.”

The commonplace narrative that places GC within the history of the repetitive revival of cosmopolitan thought is best expressed by April Carter ( 2001 ) and Derek Heater ( 1996 ), whose histories observe a cycle of periodic revival in which the structural contradictions of imperial formations follow a pattern of critique and externalization. Heater begins with Aristotle’s view of the polis as a form of political organization that is congruent with the nature of man. 1 This is an intellectual gesture that naturalizes the polis, making it an expression of the final and perfect condition of human development, and provides legitimacy for its transplantation elsewhere (similar to Hegel’s view of the state). These ideas were put under sustained pressure from circumstances that bear a remarkable similarity to patterns coded by contemporary scholars as “globalization,” including territorial expansion, extensions of governance, migration, and the privatization of the military. Cosmopolitan ideas, Heater argues, arise out of the failure of the polis to live up to claims that it is the expression of human nature. This led to the exploration of two other ideas: the true nature of human beings should be sought either in solitary individualism, or in the essential oneness of the human race. These were first articulated by figures who were critical of existing political arrangements such as Diogenes, Cicero, and Zeno. According to Heater, the periodic revival of cosmopolitan ideas since ancient times is caused by a sense of external threat, whether it be war or environmental catastrophe. Each articulation differs in emphasis over the role of the state, the role of the individual, the role of global institutions, and the desirability of a world state. Similarly, historian Anthony Pagden offers a genealogy of cosmopolitan thought which sees it as indelibly rooted in imperial structures but finds its culmination in the global republicanism of Immanuel Kant, in which Pagden finds there are also critiques of imperialism (Pagden, 2000 ). Thus, an analytical distinction must be maintained between concrete political projects for the realization of global democracy or a world state, and cosmopolitan political philosophy, although they certainly intersect. So, for example, the early cosmopolitans did not devise plans for constitutions and governance, and early- 20th-century advocates for a world state (such as H. G. Wells) were not philosophers (Heater, 1996 ). The International Relations (IR) scholarship which sees the eventuation of a world state deriving from structural conditions is not necessarily engaging normatively with the concept of GC (Ruggie, 2002 ; Wendt, 2003 ), and some scholarship on GC sees its democratic potential in the fact that it is a set of citizen claims, attitudes, and behaviors in the absence of a world state (Dower, 2000 ; Dower & Williams, 2002 ; Falk, 2002 ).

Understanding GC as the culmination in the genealogy of cosmopolitan thought also conflicts with the cosmopolitan revival in IR, although these scholars repeat the formulation described by Heater: namely, the contradictions of globalization demonstrate the flaws in the Hegelian understanding that the nation state is the perfect reflection of human rationality and the only political arrangement that will enable the full flowering of human development. The turn to cosmopolitanism in IR is also occasioned by the end of the Cold War and the disillusionment with Marx in the context of a recognition of diverse identities and non-class-based modes of social, political, and economic exclusion and the new social movements that sprang up as a redress. The cosmopolitan vision for the extension of democracy through reformed institutions is articulated by Richard Linklater ( 1998 ), Daniele Archibugi ( 1993 ), and David Held ( 1995 ) as a redress for these structural conditions. The sovereign state cannot continue to claim to be the only relevant moral community when the opportunities and incidences of transnational harm rise alongside increasing interdependence (Doyle, 2007 ). Similar to their ancient counterparts, Linklater, Archibugi, and Held offer cosmopolitan democracy as both a critique of the Hegelian theory of the state as the highest expression human rationality and a method of expanding democracy transnationally. Both Archibugi and Linklater offer the possibility of direct citizen participation in global institutions as the mechanism that would make for a robust global democracy. Global or world citizenship is implicated in this project, but these scholars do not offer a political theory of GC as such.

The cosmopolitan revival in political theory does, however, theorize GC as a way of reconfiguring ethical foundations of the individual connection to state and world (Appiah, 2007 ; Nussbaum, 1996 ; Parekh, 2003 ). The cosmopolitanism of these scholars is organized around the premise that, in the context of “complex interdependence,” individuals in advanced economies have ethical obligations to the rest of the human race which can override their obligations to fellow citizens. Contained within many arguments in favor of GC is a latent criticism of the nation state and transnational capital. For Thomas Pogge ( 1992 ) this amounts to recognition of the insertion of the citizens of advanced economies into global value and production chains; for Bhiku Parekh this amounts to recognition of the political and economic debt gained through European colonization, and he calls for a globally oriented national citizenship (Parekh, 2003 ). 2

The central cleavage is the relevance and role of the state. Critics of GC argue that GC’s rootless sense of obligation from nowhere undermines Aristotelian notions of civic virtue, and that the nation state is the only community where active citizenship can be practiced (Carter, 2001 ; Miller, 1999 ; Walzer, 1994 ). Others offer GC as a way of being that does not devalue, erode, or supersede the nation state. Nigel Dower, for example, argued in 2000 that a world state is not needed for GC (Dower, 2000 ). Here he is responding to critics who argued at the time that GC cannot exist, because of a lack of common identity and institutions. Some scholars offer “rooted cosmopolitanism” as an affinity to the global that is grounded in individual biography and location (Kymlicka & Walker, 2012 ). Similarly, Martha Nussbaum sparked a debate among prominent political, social, legal, and literary theorists over the competing merits of national versus cosmopolitan affinity, and offered concentric circles of affinity from the individual to the global because the state as nothing more than a “morally arbitrary boundary” (Nussbaum, 1996 , p. 14). Nussbaum later revised this position to articulate a “globally sensitive patriotism,” arguing that the sentiments that underpin patriotism can be used to rescue the concept from its chauvinistic variants, allowing it then to play a role in creating a “decent world culture” (Nussbaum, 2008 , p. 81). But for most of these scholars the state is the starting point for either advocacy or critique of GC.

There are other scholars in the analytic tradition attaching to GC a notion of cosmopolitan right, meaning the restriction of individual freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else. For Luis Cabrera ( 2008 ) this is an important step toward developing an overarching conception of cosmopolitanism, one that details appropriate courses of action and reform in relation to individuals and institutions in the current global system. The collapsing of GC and cosmopolitanism as synonymous is for Cabrera a mistake. There are clear differences between them, as well as different conceptual inflections within them. Within cosmopolitanism, Cabrera details the institutional cosmopolitanism of Archibugi and Linklater, which is concerned with the creation of a comprehensive network of global governing institutions to achieve just global distributive outcomes; and moral cosmopolitanism, which as we see in Appiah, Pogge, and Parekh is concerned not with institution-building but with assessing the justice of institutions according to how individuals fare in relation to them. Cabrera’s claim is that individual cosmopolitanism should be understood as GC. GC for Cabrera is a moral orientation toward and a claim to membership of the whole of the human community and a theory of citizenship that is fundamentally concerned with appropriate individual action. In other words, Cabrera is offering a theoretical framework for the operationalization of GC which offers guidelines of “right action” for the global human community. “Right action” can be objectively known for Cabrera following the analytical tradition and particularly the liberal thought of John Rawls. On the question of the world state Cabrera equivocates. He argues that GC is the ethical orientation guiding individual action in a global human community and not preparation for a world state, but he nevertheless advocates for a world state because of the biases against cosmopolitan distributive justice inherent in the sovereign state system. For Cabrera GC identifies the very specific duties incumbent on all humankind to promote the creation of an actual global political community up to and including the creation of a world state.

The question of empire is conspicuously absent among these scholars, while other scholars fully implicate Western imperial history in their account of GC. James Tully ( 2014 ) is the only political theorist of GC to pay close attention the role of European empire in constructing, globalizing, and making modular civil citizenship. With a focus on language and meaning as the sites of political contestation, Tully sees GC as articulating a locus of struggle, noting that because of empire, most of the enduring struggles in the history of politics have taken place in and over the language of citizenship and the activities and institutions into which it is woven. GC for Tully is neither fixed nor determinable, as it is for Cabrera; it contains no calculus or universal rule for its application in particular cases. Rather it is a conjunction of “global” and “citizenship” that can be regarded as the linguistic artifact of the innovative tendency of citizens and noncitizens to contest and create something new in the practice of citizenship. Basing his account of “public philosophy” on a philosophy of language drawn from Wittgenstein, Skinner, and Foucault, in which language is constitutive of human social and political relations, Tully regards freedom and democracy as practiced through language. Language is inseparable from cognition, and in practices of meaning-making human beings continually (re)negotiate their circumstances, and in so doing have the capacity to change the language, and in changing the language, change the game. Tully offers a political theory of GC that builds on the open-endedness indicated by Linklater and Falk, and sees in the multitudinous expressions of transnational political activism the possibility of different, more democratic political arrangements. This is consistent with decolonial scholarship in IR, postcolonial scholarship in education, and critical scholarship on sustainability, which argue that the modernistic, dualist language of science is part of the problem in that it hinders the ability of scholars and citizens to conceptualize life differently. To change social reality, they argue, we have to change our language (Shallcross & Robinson, 2006 ), and for many critical scholars GC is part of this conceptual shift.

The Study of GC

Research on the practice of GC can be roughly divided between the normative theoretical and the phenomenological empirical and contains a tension between GC as actually existing and needing to be produced. Scholarship has expanded substantially since the 1990s and moved away from an association with cosmopolitanism toward a direct engagement with GC as a concept and field of study in its own right. Contributions to the field have appeared in Media and Cultural Studies (Khatib, 2003 ; Nash, 2009 ), International Law (Hunter, 1992 ; Torre, 2005 ), Psychology (Reysen & Hackett, 2017 ; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013 ), and Citizenship Studies (Arneil, 2007 ; Bowden, 2003 ; Soguk, 2014 ), but the bulk of the scholarship appears in International Relations (IR) (residing in roughly the subfields of Globalization, Global Governance, Social Movements, and Global Civil Society) and in educational scholarship (residing in pedagogical scholarship but also emerging interdisciplinary fields where educational scholarship is overlapping with International Political Economy, IR, and International Political Sociology) (Armstrong, 2006 ; Ball, 2012 ; Dale, 2000 ; Desforges, 2004 ). Methodologically, most of the scholarship has been qualitative and interpretive or critical, with a handful of quantitative approaches just emerging in Psychology seeking to measure global citizen attributes, and one study providing a quantitative aggregate account of the appearance of “GC” in textbooks (Buckner & Russell, 2013 ; Katzarska-Miller & Reysen, 2018 ; Reysen & Katzarska-Miller, 2013 ). Debates across much of the scholarship follow an optimistic–pessimistic or normative–critical dichotomy.

Sociological scholarship on globalization going back to the 1990s describes a growing global awareness that can be causally attributed to information communications technologies (ICTs). ICTs play a central role in all accounts of “observable” GC, even if operating in the background as the necessary sufficient conditions for transnational cooperation and mobilization. This sociological approach sees in the massification of communications technology a distribution of symbolic resources that inform how people see themselves and their knowledge of others in time and space. This is in keeping with 20th-century scholarship in the fields of nationalism, communication, and the histories of knowledge which have posited the constitutive nature of communications technology and identity (Anderson, 1983 ; Foucault, 1982 , 2000 ; Lule, 2015 ; Martin, Manns, & Bowe, 2004 ; Norris, 2009 ). For Urry, Pippa Norris, and others, just as national broadcasting can be causally credited with the development of national citizenship, so can ICTs be credited with the rise in global affinities, cosmopolitan worldviews, and self-identification as a global citizen. In addition to transforming the possibilities for transnational interaction, mobilization, and governance and the market across terrestrial space, ICTs enable visibility, the spread of knowledge and shared experiences, the perception of threat, and a sense of the world as a whole. For this approach there is a historical connection between ICTs and democracy dating back to the social upheaval in Europe that went with the introduction of the printing press. When ICTs are global, they enable more political transparency through the identification and exposing of wrongdoing. Harmful backstage behavior can be revealed, put on display, and represented over and over again. This has been done to states and corporations over their environmental and human-rights transgressions and has fuelled the activities of new social movements. Such revelations contribute to the knowledge base of those claiming to be global citizens, and of those being so characterized in the scholarship.

Communications technology is one of the structural factors making it possible to uncouple citizenship from the territorial state. Advances in ICTs have also created the technical capacity to make GC an institutional reality. The volume Debating Transformations of National Citizenship devotes a section to debating the possibilities inherent in blockchain technology to confer a grant of citizenship to all humanity through a universal digital identity. Blockchain technology provides the technological capability, international law provides the global juridical framework (Article 25(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), according to which every citizen should have the right to participate in the conduct of public affairs), and the Sustainable Development Goals articulate a political will and policy framework (goal 16.9 aims to provide a legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030 ). For optimists, blockchain technology would provide universal recognition of personhood; enhance individual freedom by allowing people to create self-sovereign identities with control over their personal data; mitigate against the increased politicization of citizenship; and could have the benefit of protecting human rights and stateless persons, assisting in the fight against human trafficking, and even mitigate the tendency of states to monetize naturalization (De Filippi, 2018 ). In addition, it contains the possibility for emancipatory movements to mobilize across territorial borders. The creation of multiple cloud communities would allow for experimentation with democratic utopias and would enable a direct global democracy by creating the possibility of a one-person-one-vote participation in global governance (Orgad, 2018 ). By extending decision-making power to individuals and communities that are currently excluded, it contains the potential for the realization of cosmopolitan democracy as envisaged by Linklater and Archibugi. For pessimists, this would require a globalization of communications technology that is not environmentally sustainable and would centralize power in the hands of states and corporations.

Moving beyond technological determinism, a common refrain in the study of GC is that it is organically expressed, manifested and spread by the globalizing of civil society and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) (Armstrong, 2006 ; Carter, 2001 ; Desforges, 2004 ; Meutzelfeldt & Smith, 2002 ). Here, the attribute of causality is not necessarily with the individual, but with the variety of political arrangements that have emerged to address transnational issues. According to April Carter, “amnesty as an organisation can be seen as a collective global citizen” (Carter, 2001 , p. 83). While not all the groups that fall within the designation Global Civil Society (GCS) can be associated with GC, it is the groups which are engaged in political lobbying, policy work, volunteering, campaigning, fundraising, and protest on social justice issues to do with poverty, inequality, and human rights that are regarded as sites for the study of GC because they are ostensibly motivated by identification with the whole of humanity, cosmopolitan values, a concern about injustice, a willingness to act collaboratively and cooperatively. Moreover, their activities are undergirded by and contribute to the operationalization of a universal system of human rights. They assist local populations in making claims against state governments and they make claims against global institutions for redress of problems. Participants in these networks are transnationally mobile through associations which facilitate the production of knowledge, the formation of “epistemic communities,” and consensus therefore around the policy response to the transnational issues around which they are organized (Haas, 1989 , 1992 ).

A circular logic is at play here. Activists who care about social justice issues comprise the personnel of groups which create networks for the purposes of making change. These networks in turn are new forms of association wherein participation engenders the sorts of values and attributes which can be assigned to the global citizen (Pallas, 2012 ). This logic of learning through participation is a common refrain across political theory, constructivist IR, social movements, and education scholarship (Finnemore, 1993 ). These developments in transnational collective action underpin the claim that changing patterns of global governance create new consequences for citizenship. Much of the scholarship regards this as a democratic trend because many of the groups which inhabit these networks are (semi)autonomous from states and governance structures; use knowledge gathered from grassroots and professional experience to highlight global issues to shape public opinion in such a way as to put pressure on states and corporations responsible for abuses; or push global public policy around health, education, and development in the direction of a more equitable distribution and access and inclusion. Even when the policy preferences of TANs make it onto the global agenda (such as happened with educational access and inclusion and GC education via the Sustainable Development Goals), these groups can continue to apply pressure by also monitoring the operation of UN agencies or national compliance with particular international agreements: the Global Education Monitoring Reports and a special issue of Global Policy (volume 10, supplement 1, September 2019 ) are good examples of this. TANs are regarded as strengthening international society and linkages between states (mitigating the structural condition of anarchy initially posed by IR). For scholars, these spaces of activity embody GC by promoting a world order based not on state interests but on human rights, and acting as a vehicle for strengthening the legitimacy of global institutions and international law (Jelin, 2010 ; Shallcross & Robinson, 2006 ). The interaction they create between the bottom-up and top-down in an expanded architecture of global governance divided by policy specialism is evidence of Alexander Wendt’s claim that a world state is inevitable (Wendt, 2003 ).

However, civil-society groups and TANs are not the only nonstate actors laying claim to the label “global citizen.” Corporations and their representative organizations (e.g., the World Economic Forum) are also adopting the label, and the literature on Global Corporate Citizenship cites the same set of circumstances regarding the pressure that globalization has put upon state capacity. In the circumstance of a “global regulatory deficit” that has been created by financing conditions that required the shrinkage of the state, corporations have a choice between exploiting that deficit for gain, or exhibiting “enlightened self-interest” by recognizing that they have social responsibilities as well as rights. Corporations act as global citizens, according to this literature, by assuming responsibilities of a state, such as the provision of public-health programs, education, and protection of human rights through working conditions while operating in countries with repressive regimes. Global corporate citizens engage in self-regulation to ensure the peace and stability required for continued realization of profits (Henderson, 2000 ; Schwab, 2008 ; Sherer & Palazzo, 2008 ). Considering that much of the activism of social movements against neoliberal globalization has been directed against corporations and the global institutions promoting their preferred policy agendas, this raises a question in need of further exploration. How can the site of the trouble provide ostensibly the solution? Should observers be relieved by the corporate recognition of social justice issues when economic nationalism is on the rise, or should it be regarded as an instrumental attempt at co-opting?

Here lies a central cleavage animating both the endorsement and the critiques of GC. Does capitalism underwrite democracy through economic growth, or does it erode democracy by facilitating monopolies which put power and wealth in the hands of a few? For many commentators, the expanded networks of global governance are not democratic, because they are inhabited by powerful actors with asymmetric bargaining power and the ability to ensure that whatever compromises are made do not trouble the logic of the existing system (El Bouhali, 2015 ; Caballero, 2019 ). The spaces inhabited by global citizens are not in fact spaces of negotiation open to all, and particularly as they are formalized and professionalized, they create an elite (Pallas, 2012 ) of what are effectively bureaucratic functionaries of global governance. Moreover, these elites are primarily from the Global North and are criticized for pursuing an elite-led advanced economy agenda for the international system. Structural imbalances are often cited between Southern and Northern participants because participation requires resources and this creates a Western bias (Gaventa & Tandon, 2010 ). Rather than seeing these actors as representing and advocating on behalf of voiceless constituents, Pallas ( 2012 ) sees a moral hazard and a lack of accountability in “global citizens” who propose policy solutions for which they may not bear the costs by intervening in problems that do not affect them directly. Participants may mistake as “global connectedness” what is in effect identity-sharing among elites. In addition, it is the institutional structure and the funding models of GCS, which have long been subjects of critique, that limit the ability of these groups to entreat the public to behave as global citizens (Desforges, 2004 ).

Richard Falk’s 1993 essay “The Making of Global Citizenship” describes the global citizen as “a type of global reformer: an individual who intellectually perceives a better way of organizing the political life of the planet” (Falk, 1993 , p. 41). This brings us to the assumption of causality which individualizes the emergence of GC in a quintessentially modern gesture which sees GC born of individuals who think critically and do not accept the organization of political life as they find it, but instead ask foundational questions and engage in utopian visions. Falk describes GC as “thinking, feeling and acting for the sake of the human species” (Falk, 1993 , p. 20). GC is thus an orientation toward the collective which begins in the individual with a specific kind of attitude, aptitude, and knowledge. Something peculiar is happening with the consolidation of GC discourse and scholarship. With its uniform emphasis on activism, the global-citizen discourse, whether it occurs in international organisations, corporations, global civil society, individuals or scholarship, has the effect of normalizing and shifting the normative orientation around political activism. This is a significant development given the context of the proliferation of political activisms since the 1960s and the wide variety of political mobilizations occurring on both the right and left of the spectrum in the 21st century . Moreover, the global-citizen discourse has the effect of legitimating the transnational agendas of certain activists (Pallas, 2012 ), and has resulted in a significant normative shift within global institutions in favor of the issues first brought to attention by antiglobalization activists of the 1980s and 1990s. This could be regarded with considerable skepticism as a form of co-opting, or with some relief as a welcome salve to chauvinisms of all varieties. Under the rubric of “GC,” the notion that globalizing capital might have any causal connection to political instability, environmental and health catastrophes, and growing inequality is seldom entertained, even as GC’s insertion into the Sustainable Development Goals sees the production of global citizens as the solution to global problems through the production of global “change makers.” Either way, there is a marked tension between two areas of scholarship in education and political science, where one sees in transnational advocacy the existence of global citizens, and the other sees in the globalization of education policy a strategy for their production.

The conceptualization of GC informs how it is studied. Optimistic scholarship observes what it considers to be organic expressions of GC in social movements, transnational advocacy networks, global governance, and among elite actors. Pessimistic scholarship observes the promotion of GC by elites and through private and governance institutions as a hegemonic strategy to contain and displace social movements; to institutionalize an epistemic paradigm which forecloses on critical thinking and non-Western, particularly indigenous knowledges; and to create a political subject which is amenable to globalizing capital (Bowden, 2003 ; Chapman, 2018 ). Across all this scholarship there are differing accounts of causality which traverse assumptions around human agency, social structure, technological change, and social engineering (Wendt, 1987 ). Technological determinant accounts attribute change to communications technology, top-down accounts attribute change to institutions and governance, and bottom-up accounts attribute change to individual and group agency. The latter two are complicated by the now very large field of GC Education, which has emerged from a combination of elite-led and social movement approaches to education in the 20th century . What is common to all is a characterization of GC as a change in the political subject. Despite the variety in conceptualization and definition of GC, the active, collective, and public element is consistent throughout. Across all the scholarship and debate there appear to be two central issues which require more systematic engagement. The first is the assumption that all forms of political activism are politically “progressive” (that is, in favor of human rights, political freedom, democracy, and equality); and the second is the assumption that GC is inherently neoliberal and therefore also inherently imperial.

A continuing blind spot in much of this scholarship is the concurrent rise of the right-wing political mobilization in various locations. This issue is debated in a volume in dialogue with Tully’s essay “On Global Citizenship” (Tully, 2014 ), and forms a substantive limitation in Tully’s account. Tully is overly optimistic that all forms of nonviolent contestation of civil citizenship are aimed at democracy, freedom, human rights, peace, and equality. He does not consider that alongside more “progressive” globally networked forms of activism are equally regressive forms of negotiation for more conservative and chauvinistic aims, sometimes enacted through violent means (Comas, Shrivastava, & Martin, 2015 ). Duncan Bell makes this criticism as well as raising the question of subject formation, which Tully leaves unaddressed (Bell, 2014 ). This is a notable absence in a time when the social engineering of GC is an active multilateral project. Part of this multilateral project is also an attempt to recapture youth mobilization away from the mobilizing tactics of various far-right or terrorist groups (Bersaglio et al., 2015 ; OECD, 2018 ; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2018 ). In the production of the “global citizen,” then, is also a contestation over what counts as politics, and Tully and other global citizen optimists fail to account for the potential weaponization of the political orientation and allegiance of young people.

Equally, Tully’s engagement in favor of GC is in tension with critical scholarship which sees in GC the continuance of an imperial project. Tully’s understanding of empire is reduced to Western European empire (as is it for most scholars critical of the Western tradition, including both postcolonial and decolonial). This is both one-sided and ahistorical and fails to consider the world historical development of empires in the plural and the fact that what Europe colonized at its periphery was, in many cases, other empires (Burbank & Cooper, 2010 ). There is a growing body of scholarship in International Relations (IR) which attempts to grapple in various ways, some more successful than others, with the peculiar absence of the history of empire from the discipline (Barkawi, 2010 ; Blanken, 2012 ; Colas, 2010 ; Dillon Savage, 2010 ; Go, 2011 ; Nexon & Wright, 2007 ; Spruyt, 2016 ); a growing body of scholarship which is calling for disciplinary decolonization (Abdi et al., 2015 ; Apffel-Marglin, 2004 ; Go, 2013 ; Gutierrez et al., 2010 ; Hudson, 2016 ; Taylor, 2012 ); and a growing body of historical scholarship which takes a comparative approach both to empires and to their role in constructing the international system (Burbank & Cooper, 2010 ; Darwin, 2007 ; Alcock et. al., 2001 ). The problem with the GC-is-imperial critique is that it has been made without a systematic engagement with the theoretical and methodological problem that empire poses for the social sciences. Equally, scholarship within IR that has begun to broach this question has done so without contending seriously with what postcolonial scholarship has done to further such an endeavor, or with how the reintroduction of empire poses serious problems for the very foundations of the discipline of political science (Biccum, 2018a ; Barkawi, 2010 ; Barkawi & Laffey, 2002 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). The recognition of empire and state co-constitution, which is made legible by the scholars who (in both history and historical IR) have begun to make empire an inescapable foundation of inquiry, necessitates a denaturalization of the state. Once the nation state is properly historically contextualized as embedded in imperial politics, the cosmopolitan debate over whether individual allegiance and identity is owed to state or humanity becomes remarkably hollow.

But equally, the state is as much a conceptual variable as GC, and a common critique of the methodological nationalism of much Western political thought and of the social sciences is that it has contributed to a normalization and naturalization of the state which is not consistent with the historical facts of the international system (Ferguson & Mansbach, 2010 ; Mitchell, 1991 ). Once this foundational problem that empire poses for how the social sciences have traditionally understood the state is properly engaged, scholars who value democracy, human rights, and justice have no choice but to normatively endorse GC, or perhaps, following Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy (Shiva, 2005 ). In addition, scholars need to be careful about continuing to brandish critiques of GC under the rubric of “neoliberalism” in an age of hegemonic decline (Biccum, 2020 ). If GC is indeed imperial, this claim must be made with a very robust understanding of what is meant by empire, which is among many other things, after all, also a concept (Biccum, 2018a ). Scholarship on GC needs to continue, as it has begun to do, to empirically map its usage, operationalization, and institutionalization, with a particular focus on how concepts do political work. The field, practice, and use of the concept is growing. Future scholarship should be paying close empirical attention to how, by whom, and to what purposes it is being used while engaging robustly with questions of norms, methods, and the politics of knowledge. Scholars across the different fields and different normative, theoretical, and empirical divides need to begin to speak to one another. Most importantly, scholars need to keep as the focal point of their inquiry how the concept of GC itself raises important foundational questions about how we should live.

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• Walzer, M. (1994). Thick and thin: Moral arguments at home and abroad . London, UK: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Wendt, A. (1987). The agent-structure problem in international relations theory. International Organisation , 41 (3), 335–370.
• Wendt, A. (2003). Why a world state is inevitable. European Journal of International Relations , 9 (4), 491–542.
• Yuval-Davis, N. (1997, Month). National spaces and collective identities: Border, boundaries, citizenship and gender relations . Inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Greenwich, London, UK.

1. Derek Heater acknowledges that similar themes advocating world community and government can be found in the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese intellectual traditions (Heater, 1996 ).

2. This view has been problematized by scholarship occurring at the same time which examines the ways in which globalization has changed the state through the very same transnational governance structures that contemporary scholarship regards as empirical evidence for the existence of GC. For an account of globalization and the state see Clark ( 1999 ).

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Why Study History? (1998)

/ AHA Resource Library

/ Why Study History? (1998)

Published Date

January 1, 1998

Resource Type

AHA Archival Document, Essay

Graduate Education, K–12 Education, Teaching & Learning

This historical document is from the archives of the American Historical Association. It is provided for you to interpret as a primary source and might no longer reflect the editorial decisions or views of the organization.

In 2020, Peter N. Stearns revisited this essay with “ Why Study History? Revisited ” in  Perspectives on History .

By Peter N. Stearns

People live in the present. They plan for and worry about the future. History, however, is the study of the past. Given all the demands that press in from living in the present and anticipating what is yet to come, why bother with what has been? Given all the desirable and available branches of knowledge, why insist—as most American educational programs do—on a good bit of history? And why urge many students to study even more history than they are required to?

Any subject of study needs justification: its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. Most widely accepted subjects—and history is certainly one of them—attract some people who simply like the information and modes of thought involved. But audiences less spontaneously drawn to the subject and more doubtful about why to bother need to know what the purpose is.

Historians do not perform heart transplants, improve highway design, or arrest criminals. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve useful purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066) or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent. Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing aspect of the discipline. History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical meaning. All definitions of history’s utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts.

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don’t use what we know about experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society’s operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the “pastness of the past”—the ways people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and ultimately another perspective on human life and society.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration. “History teaching by example” is one phrase that describes this use of a study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

History Provides Identity

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one’s own family is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values—it’s the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several overlapping categories.

The Ability to Assess Evidence . The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also be applied to information encountered in everyday life.

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations . Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience, provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment, but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change . Experience in assessing past examples of change is vital to understanding change in society today—it’s an essential skill in what we are regularly told is our “ever-changing world.” Analysis of change means developing some capacity for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind, and we will function as better citizens in the process.

History Is Useful in the World of Work

History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify: students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information, and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment. There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields. Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can clearly help us in our working lives.

Why study history? The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally “salable” skills, but its study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

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October 21, 2018

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Essay on Global Citizenship

Students are often asked to write an essay on Global Citizenship in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

What is global citizenship.

Global citizenship means seeing yourself as a part of the whole world, not just your country. It’s about caring for people and the planet, no matter where they are. Global citizens work together to solve big problems like poverty and climate change.

Responsibilities of Global Citizens

Being a global citizen means you have duties. You should learn about different cultures, respect the environment, and help others. It’s about making good choices that don’t hurt others around the world.

Benefits of Global Citizenship

When we act as global citizens, we make the world better. We get to understand different people and can work on making peace. It also helps us to solve big problems that affect everyone, like keeping the earth clean and safe.

250 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is the idea that everyone on our planet is part of a big community. It’s like thinking of the whole world as one big neighborhood. People who believe in global citizenship care about issues that affect everyone, no matter where they live.

Caring for the Earth

Helping each other.

Global citizens also think it’s important to help people in need. This could be by giving money to charities that work all over the world or by learning about different cultures and understanding people who are different from us.

Another big idea in global citizenship is fairness. This means making sure that people everywhere have what they need, like food, water, and a chance to go to school. It’s not fair if some people have too much while others have too little.

Working Together

Finally, global citizenship is about countries and people working together to solve big problems. This can be anything from fighting diseases that spread across countries to making sure everyone has a good place to live.

In short, being a global citizen means caring for our world and the people in it. It’s about learning, sharing, and working together to make the world a better place for everyone.

500 Words Essay on Global Citizenship

Imagine a big school that has students from every part of the world. These students learn together, play together, and help each other. This is a bit like what global citizenship is. Global citizenship means thinking of yourself as a part of one big world community. Instead of just looking after the people in your own town or country, you care about everyone on Earth.

Why is Global Citizenship Important?

Respecting cultures and people.

Global citizens respect and learn about different cultures and people. Every culture has its own special stories, food, and ways of living. When you are a global citizen, you are curious about these differences and you understand that every person is important, no matter where they come from.

Taking Care of the Planet

Our Earth is the only home we have. Global citizens take care of it by doing things like recycling, saving water, and planting trees. We all share the same air, water, and land, so it’s everyone’s job to look after them.

Helping Others

Learning and sharing knowledge.

Being a global citizen also means learning about the world and sharing what you know. You can read books, watch films, or talk to people from different places. Then, you can share what you learn with your friends and family.

Being Active in Your Community

Even though global citizenship is about the whole world, it starts in your own community. You can join groups that clean up parks, help people who are sick, or raise money for good causes. By doing small things where you live, you are being a part of something much bigger.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Should I Consider U.S. Citizenship?

Citizenship is the common thread that connects all Americans. We are a nation bound not by race or religion, but by the shared values of freedom, liberty, and equality. 

Throughout our history, the United States has welcomed newcomers from all over the world. Immigrants have helped shape and define the country we know today. Their contributions help preserve our legacy as a land of freedom and opportunity. More than 200 years after our founding, naturalized citizens are still an important part of our democracy. By becoming a U.S. citizen, you too will have a voice in how our nation is governed.

The decision to apply is a significant one. Citizenship offers many benefits and equally important responsibilities. By applying, you are demonstrating your commitment to this country and our form of government.  

Vote.  Only citizens can vote in federal elections. Most states also restrict the right to vote, in most elections, to U.S. citizens.

Serve on a jury.  Only U.S. citizens can serve on a federal jury. Most states also restrict jury service to U.S. citizens. Serving on a jury is an important responsibility for U.S. citizens.

Travel with a U.S. passport.  A U.S. passport enables you to get assistance from the U.S. government when overseas, if necessary.

Bring family members to the U.S.  U.S. citizens generally get priority when petitioning to bring family members permanently to this country.

Obtain citizenship for children under 18 years of age.  In most cases, a child born abroad to a U.S. citizen is automatically a U.S. citizen.

Apply for federal jobs.  Certain jobs with government agencies require U.S. citizenship.

Become an elected official.  Only citizens can run for federal office (U.S. Senate or House of Representatives) and for most state and local offices.

Keep your residency.  A U.S. citizen’s right to remain in the United States cannot be taken away.

Become eligible for federal grants and scholarships.  Many financial aid grants, including college scholarships and funds given by the government for specific purposes, are available only to U.S. citizens.

Obtain government benefits.  Some government benefits are available only to U.S. citizens.

Below you will find several rights and responsibilities that all citizens should exercise and respect. Some of these responsibilities are legally required of every citizen, but all are important to ensuring that America remains a free and prosperous nation. 

• Freedom to express yourself.
• Freedom to worship as you wish.
• Right to a prompt, fair trial by jury.
• Right to vote in elections for public officials.
• Right to apply for federal employment requiring U.S. citizenship.
• Right to run for elected office.
• Freedom to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Responsibilities

• Support and defend the Constitution.
• Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.
• Participate in the democratic process.
• Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.
• Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.
• Participate in your local community.
• Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities.
• Serve on a jury when called upon.
• Defend the country if the need should arise.  
• The Citizen's Almanac (PDF, 8.53 MB)
• Thinking About Applying for Naturalization?  (PDF, 692.82 KB)
• 10 Steps to Naturalization (PDF, 790.4 KB)
• The pocket Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States (PDF, 724.86 KB)
• Important Information for New Citizens (PDF, 208.39 KB)