What does it mean to be an “active citizen”? The limitations and opportunities posed by different understandings and deployments of “citizenship”
Gaynor, NiamhORCID: 0000-0001-5645-7032
(2023)
What does it mean to be an “active citizen”? The limitations and opportunities posed by different understandings and deployments of “citizenship”.
Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 37
.
pp. 15-27.
ISSN 1748-135X
Over the last fifteen years, policy and debate on development education
have become increasingly framed in terms of citizenship. Yet, despite its ubiquity,
citizenship is rarely defined. It remains unclear what exactly it means to be an
‘active citizen’, much less a globally engaged one. Drawing from the rich body of
theory and debate within the social sciences in this field, in this article I highlight
both the limitations and the opportunities posed by different understandings and
deployments of ‘citizenship’ by a range of actors and interests. Exploring the
multiple exclusions and inequalities experienced by particular groups which limit
and/or inhibit their agency as active citizens, I argue that citizenship, within
development education and more broadly, is not something which just exists; it
must be claimed. Such claims involve struggles and tensions. In short, they
involve activism.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Citizenship; Activism; Global Citizenship Education; Neoliberalism; Exclusion; Erasures, Denial