Towards a conceptual framework for citizenship

This chapter aims to provide a conceptual framework for discussing citizenship. It<br />offers a brief account of various dimensions of citizenship that may be used as a<br />guide to understanding the evolution of Western ideas and forms of citizenship, as<br />well as contemporary problems with them. The chapter considers citizenship as a<br />legal status, as an administrative category, as a political practice and as an ideal to<br />be attained. 1 It also considers the sites or domains in which citizenship is or ought<br />to be practised. Each of these dimensions raises questions that citizens, non-citizens<br />and governments have asked over the centuries and that still provoke debate.2<br />Nonetheless, the chapter makes no claim to be comprehensive and, for the sake of<br />brevity, its generalizations may not be sufficiently sensitive to the many variations<br />and peculiarities of Western concepts and practices of citizenship.<br />