Human Rights and Citizenship: an Unjustifiable Conflation?

Abstract

Human rights discourses are increasingly being coupled to discourses on citizenship and citizenship education. In this paper, I consider the premise that human rights might provide a theoretical underpinning for citizenship. I categorise citizenship into five main categories—moral, legal, identity‐based, participatory and cosmopolitan. Bringing together theoretical and documentary evidence, I argue that human rights cannot logically be a theoretical underpinning for citizenship, regardless of how citizenship may be conceptualised. This is because human rights discourses are located within a universalist frame of reference, in contrast to that of citizenship, which is located within a more particularist frame. Human rights are conceptually distinct from citizenship, and the conflating of human rights with citizenship not only is conceptually incoherent, but may actually obstruct the empowerment and active participation of individual citizens in the context of a political community.

Citizenship with Chinese characteristics? An investigation into Chinese university students’ civic perceptions and civic participation

“…For example, Kiwan (2005) claimed that there are five broad elements of citizenship: moral, legal, identity-based, participatory, and cosmopolitan. Walzer (1994), on the other hand, used a dichotomous classification to define citizenship, seeing it as either thin or thick.…”

Human rights and public education

“…(Crick 1999, 5). This was in strong contrast to the active citizen of Thatcherism who, as Faulks (2006, 125) points out, 'was a law abiding, materially successful individual who was willing and able to exploit the opportunities created by the promotion of market rights, while demonstrating occasional compassion for those less fortunate than themselves -charity rather than democratic citizenship was to be the main She argues (Ibid, 71), against those for whom rights should be framed 'in terms of human rights based on international law' -Kiwan adds the word 'responsibilities' to 'rights', and against those for whom the source of human rights is the 'individual's moral nature', here human rights are a consequence of 'the inherent dignity of the human person', that 'when talking of citizen's rights and responsibilities, these rights are based on membership of a political community, rather than solely in terms of membership of the human species' (as explained by her in Kiwan 2005). For her, members of a political community are those who have formal citizenship status -for naturalisation, having passed the test which she helped to create.…”

Transformation of students into active and participatory citizens: an exploratory study in Hong Kong

“…This cosmopolitan citizenship is considered to be important to civic education (Kiwan 2005). One of the students opined: I participated as a volunteer in the WTO demonstration because I think the Korean farmers are being exploited by those developed countries.…”