Citizenship

Citizenship can be broadly defined as the participatory relationship of individuals with their political community. The legal status, political agency, and identity of citizenship in each sociohistorical context are not fixed but, rather, fluctuate in space and time, determined by correlations of power between dominant and dominated social actors. In this state of flux, citizenship is dialectically connected with privacy and surveillance. In any society, the dominant notion of privacy and the degree of its restriction by social surveillance influence the relation between individuals and political communities, and vice versa. Hence today, privacy is prevalently considered as crucial for the political agency and identity of citizens and is, therefore, embedded in the legal status of citizenship as a fundamental right, whereas excessive surveillance is regarded ...