Concerns about the strength and efficacy of our democracy are front and center for many Americans, including the very concept of democratic citizenship. How can we redefine “citizenship” for today’s context in a way that resonates with a diverse range of civic learning advocates? In this series, Citizens & Scholars is excited to share three projects we undertook to explore this question raised by the Mapping Civic Measurement report.
On December 10 at the 2024 Annual Conference on Citizenship, the winners of Citizens & Scholars’ Youth Civic Solutions Competition will be honored. These young people, ages 14-24, were asked to share their big, bold ideas about how to increase civic knowledge, participation, and trust among their Gen Z peers.
The conference theme, “Renewing Civic Health,” comes at a particularly critical moment. For months, political lawn signs decorated communities. putting our political differences on full display. As the signs slowly come down and communities start to look ahead, will we be able to move past the differences that defined us during election season? If we care about our civic health—the way communities are organized to define and address public problems—we must.
Our interviews with civic field leaders indicated that a sense of community or belonging was a major part of how people think about citizenship. People who feel this sense of belonging are more likely to come together to solve issues. But what about those who don’t feel connected or choose not to engage? Civic health depends on how people define citizenship and the roles they see for themselves in their communities.
In our interviews, we identified three categories of citizenship: traditional, American, and global. Recognizing, however, that there is extensive scholarly literature on the subject of citizenship, we thought it important to get a sense of that scholarship as well. To deepen our understanding, Citizens & Scholars partnered with a team of graduate students from American University’s Education Policy and Leadership program* who conducted the literature review shared below.
Their review further illustrated the complex nature of citizenship and organized it into seven distinct categories:
- Traditional citizenship
- American citizenship
- Global citizenship
- Cultural citizenship
- Active citizenship
- Silent citizenship
- Digital citizenship
So, what’s the big picture?
Citizenship is multifaceted. It encompasses legal, cultural and social dimensions all of which influence an individual’s relationship with their community and the broader world. From the legal base to more modern notions of belonging, cultural identity, and digital engagement, individuals may feel they hold more than one type of citizenship or none at all.
Even actions and responsibilities associated with citizenship are deeply complex. Take voting for example. As described above, “silent citizens” may see their decision to abstain from voting as a moral one, actively deciding not to participate. Alternatively, a silent citizen may simply be disconnected from the democratic process, and therefore their disengagement is passive in nature. This distinction was described by our interviewees as well.
With this one example, we see that multiple things can be true at once: many aspects of citizenship are essential for the broader health of our democracy, but our democracy is made up of individuals—all of whom have the liberty to decide how they engage.
