The concept of citizenship is a relatively new contraption in the annals of human history. We had family, we had communities, we had tribes, and overtime we developed states. The original concept of citizenship was an extension of the concept of family. Communities were built on families, everyone was related by blood. With wars and migration came the concept of state based citizenship.
A conquering group define a boundary, and people where either granted access or not. Citizenship was created as a tool of inclusion. Allowing people with no family connection a construct for induction into a community. As conquering people grew the size of their territories, they introduced a tool for membership into their elite categories by inducting desirable from the conquered groups. Their tool of choice was citizenship. Empires granted citizenship to conquered people, reshaping the concept again.
Today, citizenship is mostly defined within the confines of nation states, although that is increasingly being challenged as corporations gain many of the rights of citizenship, and fluid digital citizenship are being defined.
As the notion of empires change in the nineteenth century, the concept of citizenship also began to change. New nations were formed, and membership into the community of these emerging nation states was permissive. Although some held on to the idea of family based citizenship, the demand for population size as a currency for economic power and legitimacy led to a redefinition of citizenship. Some nations even went further to recruit citizens from desiring regions of the world into their countries.
As the population of the world continue to grow, and regions of the world diverged further into rich and poor, the strain on migration based citizenship began to create new challenges.
Politicians began to see opportunities in making hay out of who is allowed into communities. Soon enough concepts like aliens began to take root. Today, most nations grant citizenship on the basis of birth. However, increasing number of nations now grant citizenship through naturalization, an evolving definition in different countries.
There was a time citizenship was granted on the basis of wealth and gender. Poor people, slaves and women were excluded. In the united states, citizenship was once granted on the basis of immigrants origin (as a matter of policy, if not law). Today, there is the concept of illegal immigrants, suggesting that some people do not have a right to be people.
This taps right into the strain of exclusion that happens to be the mother of racism. Many politicians and people in America buy into this strain.
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