The Rise of Earned Citizenship

The author examines the concept of “citizenship” and shows how the
definition of the concept and its scope have changed. “Citizenship”
entered the social science lexicon as a
code word for the capacity
of post-WWII capitalism to reform itself by providing formal, and
even a
modicum of substantive equality for those who were initially
at its losing end: workers or the “proletariat.” Citizenship connoted
rights and equality as counterforce to a
simultaneously wealth- and
inequality-producing capitalism. It was then generalized beyond
its original meaning as counter-concept to class, to other types of
equality-seeking movements. Citizenship thus became a
metaphor
and platform for intra-societal claims-making by excluded groups.
The author traces the development of citizenship in the altogether
different context of international migration, from being a
“right” to
something that needs to be “earned.”