The Growing Importance of Citizenship in Modern Politics

Few ideas in political theory have travelled as far, or grown as quickly in importance, as citizenship. What began as a simple legal label-a marker of who belonged to a community and who did not-has expanded into one of the most contested and consequential concepts in modern politics. Today, debates over who counts as a citizen, what rights citizenship guarantees, and what obligations it demands sit at the centre of arguments about democracy, welfare, migration, and social justice. Understanding why citizenship matters more now than ever requires us to trace how thinkers gave the concept depth, and how those ideas continue to shape the political questions of our time.

Why citizenship became a central political question 🔗

For much of history, citizenship was treated as a settled matter of law. You were either a member of the state or you were not. But this thin definition always carried unresolved tensions. Who decides the boundaries of membership? What does belonging actually entitle a person to? And what does the community expect in return? These are not trivial questions of administration-they are questions about power, equality, and inclusion.

The concept of citizenship is genuinely ambiguous because it points to two things at once: a normative ideal of how the relationship between individual and community ought to work, and a positive reality of how it actually functions in law and practice. Its form and substance have shifted across historical periods, never staying the same for long. This is precisely why the idea has grown in significance. As societies became more diverse and more democratic, the gaps in our understanding of citizenship-who is included, what rights they hold, what they owe-became harder to ignore.

T.H. Marshall and the three elements of citizenship 🔗

No discussion of citizenship’s significance can begin anywhere but with the British sociologist T.H. Marshall. In his celebrated 1949 lecture, later published as “Citizenship and Social Class,” Marshall offered a framework that still structures debate today. He argued that citizenship developed through three distinct elements that were won over successive centuries: civil, political, and social rights.

The sequence of rights 🔗

According to Marshall, each element emerged in a different era. Civil rights took shape in the eighteenth century, political rights in the nineteenth, and social rights in the twentieth century. Civil rights are the freedoms necessary to secure individual liberty-equality before the law, the right to own property, freedom of speech, and the freedom to enter into contracts. Political rights followed, centred on the right to vote and to stand for political office. Social rights came last, and they were the most radical addition.

For Marshall, social citizenship meant far more than legal status. It involved the right to a basic level of economic welfare and security, and the right to share fully in the social heritage of one’s society. This is why his name is permanently linked to the welfare state. The postwar creation of public education, healthcare, and social security in Britain was, in his analysis, the institutional expression of social citizenship.

Citizenship and the working class 🔗

What made Marshall’s argument so influential was its connection to class struggle. He developed his theory against the backdrop of capitalism, examining how the gradual extension of equal rights interacted with the deep inequalities that markets produce. His initial focus was on the working class. The expansion of citizenship rights, he believed, would limit the negative impact of class differences on individual life chances, thereby strengthening citizens’ commitment to the political system as a whole.

Marshall’s account has faced serious criticism. Scholars have noted that it reads less like a general theory and more like a specific narrative of modern British history that oversimplifies how citizenship actually evolved. His definition of social rights, in particular, has been criticised for being vague-he never specified an overarching principle defining exactly what citizenship grants or requires. Yet even these criticisms confirm his importance. Decades of debate have been organised around the questions he raised.

Bryan Turner and the dynamics of citizenship 🔗

If Marshall mapped the elements of citizenship, the sociologist Bryan Turner asked a deeper question: how do these rights actually get won? Turner shifted attention from the content of citizenship to its sources, locating them in social conflict and collective action.

Citizenship as the product of struggle 🔗

In his study of politics in capitalist society, Turner explored citizenship as a means by which the working class and other subordinate groups effectively used political institutions to advance their interests. This was a direct challenge to Marxist dismissals of reform. Turner argued that subordinate groups could secure real gains in social and economic rights, and that democracy was not a sham but a genuine mechanism through which interests could be pursued. Citizenship rights, in this view, are not gifts handed down by the state-they are concessions extracted through pressure from below.

Social movements and identity 🔗

Turner’s most lasting contribution was his attention to the relationship between social movements and citizenship. He criticised the unitary character of Marshall’s concept, arguing that citizenship is far more varied than a single linear story of three rights suggests. In his influential 1990 work, he proposed analysing citizenship along two dimensions: whether rights are won from below or granted from above, and the relationship between the public and private spheres. A conservative view of citizenship as passive and private contrasts with a more revolutionary idea of active and public citizenship.

This distinction matters enormously. It means citizenship is not just a static bundle of entitlements but an active identity shaped by how people mobilise and participate. Turner later expanded Marshall’s three-part model by adding a fourth category-human rights-reflecting how struggles for recognition increasingly reach beyond the boundaries of any single nation-state.

Addressing inclusion and the boundaries of belonging 🔗

One reason citizenship has grown so significant is that it is the central battleground for questions of inclusion. International migration and growing diversity constantly challenge established conventions about who the citizen is, what values they should hold, and how the relationship between citizen and society should be organised. Some individuals are seen as clearly belonging to the national community; others are treated as outsiders. The hard question is who draws these boundaries, and on what basis.

When inclusion becomes contested 🔗

These debates are not abstract. The controversy over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) brought them sharply into focus. When the final NRC was published in Assam, around 1.9 million of the state’s residents were excluded, many of them from marginalised communities such as low-income groups, ethnic Bengalis, and women who struggled to produce the required documentation. The episode showed how citizenship, far from being a settled status, can be redrawn in ways that leave the most vulnerable at risk of exclusion.

The accompanying legislation provoked equally intense debate. Critics argued that linking citizenship to religious identity raised serious concerns under Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law. Supporters defended the measures on grounds of national security and humanitarian relief for persecuted minorities. Whatever one’s position, the controversy demonstrated exactly why citizenship matters so much: it determines who has a recognised claim to belong, and that determination shapes access to rights, welfare, and political voice.

Active citizenship and the health of democracy 🔗

Beyond questions of who belongs, contemporary scholars increasingly stress what citizens actually do. This is where the idea of active citizenship enters, and it has become central to thinking about democratic stability.

The problem of apathy and disengagement 🔗

Modern democracies face recurring challenges: voter apathy, declining trust in institutions, and a sense of distance between citizens and decision-makers. A purely passive citizenship-where people merely consume rights and welfare without engaging-can hollow out democratic life. The concern is that when participation withers, governments lose legitimacy and political systems become unstable. Citizenship understood only as entitlement, without a corresponding ethic of participation, slowly erodes the foundations it rests on.

Civic virtue and the republican tradition 🔗

This worry has revived an older tradition of political thought. The civic republican view, drawing on Aristotle, treats active participation as the very essence of citizenship rather than an optional extra. On this account, a citizen is defined not by what they passively possess but by what they actively do-deliberating about common affairs, holding rulers accountable, and contributing to the public good. Civic virtues such as public-spiritedness, a willingness to stay informed, and respect for the rights of others are seen as essential to keeping democracy healthy.

Rights and responsibilities together 🔗

India’s constitutional framework reflects this balance. While the Constitution initially emphasised rights, it was later recognised that a healthy democracy needs both. The 42nd Amendment in 1976 added Article 51A, setting out Fundamental Duties of citizens, with a further duty added by the 86th Amendment in 2002. Though these duties are not directly enforceable in court, they serve as a moral framework for responsible citizenship.

The underlying message is that citizens are meant to be active participants in nation-building rather than passive beneficiaries of state services. Courts have also drawn on these duties when interpreting ambiguous laws and assessing constitutional validity. The point is not that duties replace rights, but that the two are correlative-where there is a right, there is usually a corresponding responsibility. A democracy that distributes rights generously while neglecting to cultivate participation gradually weakens itself.

Citizen participation, in this sense, is fundamental to sustaining constitutional values. Through landmark judgments, the judiciary has protected core democratic principles and enabled citizens to engage with the legal system to safeguard their rights. Active engagement-from voting thoughtfully to participating in local governance through institutions like the gram panchayat-is what keeps the distance between the governed and their government from widening into alienation.

Why the concept keeps growing in significance 🔗

Pulling these threads together explains why citizenship has only become more important over time. Marshall gave us the vocabulary of civil, political, and social rights and tied citizenship to the struggle for equality. Turner reminded us that these rights are won through collective action and that citizenship can be active or passive, public or private. Contemporary debates over inclusion show that the boundaries of membership remain fiercely contested, with real consequences for marginalised groups. And the renewed emphasis on active citizenship responds directly to the dangers of apathy, dependency, and instability.

Citizenship, then, is not a relic of legal classification. It is a living concept that connects the deepest questions of political theory-equality, inclusion, rights, and obligation-to the everyday functioning of democracy. As societies grow more diverse and the pressures on democratic institutions intensify, the question of what it means to be a citizen, and to act like one, will only become more urgent.

What do you think? Should citizenship be understood primarily as a set of rights the state owes us, or as a set of responsibilities we owe to one another? And in a diverse democracy, who should have the authority to draw the boundaries of who belongs?

References

1. https://www.academia.edu/37809759/T_H_Marshalls_Theory_of_Citizenship_pdf
2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/T-H-Marshall
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._H._Marshall
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_citizenship
5. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/social-policy/th-marshalls-theory-of-citizenship.php
6. https://www.routledge.com/Citizenship-and-Capitalism-RLE-Social-Theory-The-Debate-over-Reformism/Turner/p/book/9781138991323
7. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038590024002002
8. https://jpia.princeton.edu/news/indias-national-register-citizens-threatens-mass-statelessness
9. https://lawshun.com/article/what-is-caa-nrc-law-in-india
10. https://teachers.institute/pedagogy-of-social-science/fundamental-duties-indian-citizens/
11. https://inclusiveias.com/upsc-ias-indian-polity-fundamental-duties-article-51a/
12. https://www.drishtijudiciary.com/blog/the-role-of-citizen-participation-embracing-democratic-values-on-international-day-of-democracy