GLOBALIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Globalization and Citizenship



Globalization and Citizenship

Introduction

The concept of "citizenship" is one of the most recurrent in the debates of recent times, the so-called postmodern or post-industrial era, more proper. The first thing we noted in this connection is that in the new scenario that globalization imposes on us, very different from the eighteenth century, its meaning has become quite ambiguous and polysemic.

Among the new conditions to exercise or develop citizenship, include: the new relationship between the national and international levels and between the state and the private field. This second tension is marked by the changing role of state in a global scenario, with market dominance and its institutions than ever before in human history.

Currently, the area of citizenship does not seem limited to the nation-state area; as Jürgen Habermas points, begins to take shape a global public space, as a result of global communication, which appeals to world opinion. It has opened a new space, which links the "idea of belonging to a national political community (citizenship)" with "the development of international law that subjects individuals, organizations and governments, new systems of regulation”. (Karen & Robin, 2003, 89)

In addition, we may ask what does it mean to exercise citizenship in a world and a time in which an active civil society with great social movements, carrying ideas, reflections and critical thinking has been replaced by a consumer society in which the vast majority of the people delegated their social responsibility in one another, merely to exercise the right to vote every so often?

Nevertheless, we wish to clarify that we are deeply far from those for which the concept of citizenship has been extended so that it has lost any content, views those who apply as equally legitimate from new societal forms and emergency calls "citizen networks" to the existence of a public market, under which citizens could exercise just watching TV, surfing the Internet, or working on collections of philanthropic organizations. (www.forumsocialmundial.org)

For us, then, if it is necessary to enrich the concept of citizenship with new content "or" extend "- still apply some principles that have sustained it for three centuries in this part. The issue of citizenship is still associated with the exercise of rights, or in other words, "the right to have rights."

This leads to a second definition, not ours, of course, to understand citizenship as a "body of equals", the ancient and ever-present principle of equality. Another feature, then, that defines the concept of citizenship is its multidimensional: there civil citizenship, political citizenship and social citizenship. In any rule of law, it seems obvious that all citizens should have access to civil and political rights, but not equally obvious to everyone that also economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR called) are a condition in a democratic society. (Alain , 2006, 522)

The ESC rights, therefore, must respond to the values of equality, solidarity, non discrimination, and civil and political rights. And the relationship of indivisibility and interdependence of these rights and ...