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Chapter 4

Citizenship

Social movements concerned explicitly with identity and equality have
been transforming citizenship. The sociological study of citizenship is
relatively recent, although as a concept, social status, and set of political
practices, it goes back to the ancient world. The model of citizenship
outlined by T. H. Marshall in the late 1940s, now regarded as the classic
starting point of any discussion of the topic, did not achieve widespread
influence until relatively recently (Rees, 1996 : 1; Somers, 2008 : 162 – 8).

It is especially since the 1980s that citizenship has become a topic of
extensive debate in political sociology. This is undoubtedly linked to the
growth of social movements which have challenged the traditional form
of citizenship as it has developed in liberal democracies.
As we will see when we examine Marshall ’ s model of citizenship in
more detail in section 4.1 , his account of the historical development of
citizenship focused on the extension of citizenship rights as a feature of
the progress of modern society. He represented this as the achievement
of universal citizenship, of identical rights for all citizens regardless of
socio - economic class. Focused on citizenship in relation to the occupa-
tions of male heads of households, Marshall neglected other dimensions
of social inequality. This is unsurprising, as Marshall was writing in
Britain in the late 1940s, when society was seen as stratified only in terms

of class, and the labor movement was prominent in campaigning for the
expansion of citizenship rights, particularly the social rights of the welfare
state. Class inequalities were the main focus of attention in society and
in sociology. Increasingly, however, as “ new ” social movements like the
civil rights and anti - racist movements, feminism, and the gay liberation
movement gained in strength and directed campaigns at inequalities in