The Rise of Earned Citizenship
The Rise of Earned Citizenship

Summary/Abstract: 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.”

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