Concept: Citizen

Definition: (noun) a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized.

Related Terms: Subject, national, passport holder, native, taxpayer

Description: Citizen is a charged word in 21st century political culture. A concept with ancient origins, it is closely linked to the legality of being a resident of a nation-state, partaking of rights and responsibilities. Throughout the 20th century and in the 21st, with wars causing mass movement of peoples outside their countries of origin, citizenship has become a contentious issue. European and U.S. right-leaning politicians running for office emphasize the rights of the (legal) citizen to jobs and resources that are seen as being infringed upon by the (illegal) or undocumented border-crosser. Not all citizens look alike, and citizenship can be a mode of overt or covert discrimination, as when minorities in a society see themselves as “second-class citizens.”

For U.S. immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, the countdown to citizenship can be agonizing and highly anticipated. Most countries have their own rules regarding qualifications for citizenship, and till recently, some did not accept people of a different ethnicity than the national majority to become citizens at all. The Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote powerfully about statelessness or the plight of refugees who were without rights and hence anonymous and invisible. Stripped of German citizenship by the Nazis, she remained stateless for eighteen years before settling in the United States. 

The “good citizen” has been a trope in popular comics and cartoons, films, and television shows, embodying the virtues of honesty and fellow-feeling, protecting the community and homeland, and upholding justice and order. Superman and Captain America were American cultural icons that have spawned local variants in different parts of the world. Philosophers and poets also envisaged being “a citizen of the world” as a way to a more cosmopolitan outlook that would transcend jingoistic and nativist sentiments. Yet citizenship remains one of the most powerful markers of identity in the modern world. At a time of virulent nationalisms and citizen vigilantes, citizenship is no guarantee of belonging or safety.

S.C. 2024

 

Further Readings/Viewings:

Balibar, Etienne. We, The People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Hjort, Mette & Scott Mackenzie, eds. Cinema and Nation. London & New York: Routledge, 2000.

Citizen Kane, 1941 (dir. Orson Welles)

The Americans, 2013-2018 (FX)

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