Citizenship provides people with an identity. It satisfies their need for recognition and belonging. In doing so, citizenship provides people with boundaries for membership, and includes certain rights and responsibilities. Citizenship has a different value to different people. This paper will argue that Citizenship is more of a way to regulate and control the movement of people and has changed in relation to understandings of belonging and membership.
The term citizenship has many meanings in sociology, political theory, and law. It can denote a social status, an activity, a package of rights, boundaries, a membership, an identity or a package of responsibilities. Consequently, "the scope of a 'theory of citizenship' is potentially limitless," (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2001). Citizenship remains important as an active domain or democracy and as the principle expression of being political as belonging. In an age of globalization it should be regarded as a foundation of human rights and not as a competitor, (Isin and Turner, 2007).
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