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.”