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BECOMING A CITIZEN

Online Publication Date: 01 September 2007To cite this Article: Benedicto, Jorge and Morán, Maria Luz (2007) 'BECOMING ACITIZEN', European Societies, 9:4, 601 - 622To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/14616690701314085URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616690701314085

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© Taylor and Francis 2007

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BECOMING A CITIZENAnalysing the social representations of

citizenship in youth1

Jorge BenedictoDeptartment of Sociology II, UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia), Madrid, Spain

Maria Luz MoranDeptartment of Sociology I, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT: Although citizenship and youth have traditionally seemed to be

two terms with very little in common, recent years have shown an enormousinterest in analysing their relationships. On one hand, exploring how the new

generations become citizens is a key issue for understanding the

characteristics of the civic life of a society. On the other, the concept of

citizenship has revealed itself as a potent conceptual and analytic instrument

for explaining youth transitions. In order to acquire a deeper comprehension

of these relationships, we believe it necessary to advance in their empirical

study, to acknowledge their multidimensional character, and to defend a

dynamic perspective of citizenship. This paper approaches the study ofcitizenship from its cultural dimension and proposes an analytical framework

for the empirical study of the discourses and representations of what being a

citizen means to young Europeans. Our analytical framework is structured

along two axes: the dimension of belonging and the dimension of

involvement.

Key words: citizenship; youth; social representations

1. A preliminary version of this article was discussed at the Research Network Youth and

Generation during the 5th Conference of the European Sociological Association that

took place in Helsinki in August 2001. We would like to thank Emilio Luque for his

constant collaboration in improving the text and Claire Wallace for her comments on

the first draft.We also wish to thank the two journal’s anonymous referees for their

detailed comments. This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science

and Technology (PB 98-0005) and by the Autonomus Community of Madrid (06/

0010/2003).

DOI: 10.1080/14616690701314085 601

European Societies9(4) 2007: 601�/622

– 2007Taylor & Francis

ISSN1461-6696 print

1469-8307 online

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1. Introduction

In recent years, talking about citizenship seems to be a fashionable topic insocial science. Although the danger of emptying the concept itself of allcontent by attempting to apply it to too broad a range of issues is evident,its relevance and popularity have a lot to do with the need to understandhow people become integrated into their political communities. Theprocesses of sociopolitical integration are becoming increasingly complexas the world we live in changes faster and faster, and in ways that are oftenunpredictable. All these factors explain why the institution of citizenshipis subjected to an almost continuous redefinition, and why its contents,limits, and actors are the object of debate among specialists, technicians,and politicians. All of them try to diagnose the new challenges that ourEuropean societies have to face and to find the most adequate responsesfor breaking the circle of lack of confidence, disaffection, and disinterest inpublic affairs that seems to grip democracies at the turn of the century.

In this uncertain environment, there is no doubt that reference to youthand its presence in the public sphere is one of the most important subjects,given the strategic position young people hold in the processes of buildingcitizenship (Bynner et al. 1997). The discussion about the incorporation ofnew generations as full members of society is a key issue for achieving adetailed knowledge of the genesis, access, and practices of citizenship. Yetin order for this debate to be fruitful, we believe that citizenship amongyouth must be approached, as in this paper, from an empirical andsociological perspective, even if these two adjectives are rather unusual inthis field of research. First, however, we should clarify certain issues.

In the first place, we must go beyond the stage of mere normativeformulations about the young person who readies him/herself to be a goodcitizen and address the empirical analysis of young people’s position insociety. We have to consider their experiences of what being a citizenmeans, as well as the social, economic, and cultural conditions in whichtheir lives develop. Secondly, we must bring the sociopolitical componentof citizenship back to its central position. In youth studies, citizenship toooften appears just as a synonym of adulthood, stripped of any reference tothe world of political meanings. From our point of view, if we understandcitizenship as agency (Lister 2003), being a citizen involves enjoyingseveral rights and being able to play a leading role in the social andpolitical processes of the community. Acting as a citizen involves becomingan actor in the public sphere.

The main argument of the paper builds on the idea expressed by Jonesand Gaventa (2002: 13) according to which ‘the way in which peopleunderstand themselves as citizens is likely to have a significant impact ontheir rights and obligations and on whether they participate, in what form

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and why’. Following this statement, we propose an analytical frameworkfor an empirical analysis of the discourses, images, and representations ofwhat being a citizen means for young people today.

The article is divided into four sections. In the first one, we willapproach the relationship between youth and citizenship as it has beendebated in recent years, and we will show its importance for a bettercomprehension both of youth transitions and the characteristics of civiclife. We will attempt to justify the need to go beyond the traditionalidentification of the status of citizen with that of the socially autonomousadult. As an alternative, we will defend a broader concept of what it meansto become a citizen. Our position is based on an empirical reformulation ofthe concept of citizenship, which will be developed in the second section.We will put forward the need to launch an applied sociology of citizenshipbased on two principles: a dynamic and relational idea of citizenship andthe acknowledgement of its multidimensional nature. In the third section,we will propose an analytical scheme for studying social representations ofcitizenship among young people. This analytical framework has been builton the analysis of young people’s life experiences, using recent qualitativeresearch on Spanish youngsters as a starting point. Our analytical schemeis structured along two main axes: belonging and involvement. Thecontents of the discourses and social representations of young people areorganized along these two dimensions. Finally, the contribution of ourproposals to the subject of youth-citizenship will be briefly reviewed.

2. Young people, citizens in the making?

The emphasis on the relationship between citizenship and youth is quite arecent perspective in this field of research, which is strongly linked to thenew circumstances in which young people’s lives have developed duringthe last decade. Researchers, especially in European have becomeincreasingly interested in approaching young people’s lives from newanalytical points of view that allow a better comprehension of situationsthat turn more and more complex (Bynner et al. 1997). Until recently,both terms seemed to have little in common, because traditionally it wasthought that the condition of citizen could only be attributed to thesocially independent adult. As Marshall (1950: 24) stated, the citizen parexcellence was the adult male. From this traditional perspective, youngpeople hold a number of civic rights but, lacking the independence andautonomy necessary to fully integrate themselves into the community, theydo not enjoy the status of full members, of citizens in the strict sense. Atthe most, it could be said, following Jones and Wallace (1992), that theypossess a citizenship by proxy that is determined by the relationship they

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maintain with the citizens par excellence. Yet recent developments in

citizenship theory that insist on the need of taking into account new civicrights and new subjects of citizenship (Kymlicka and Norman 1994;Turner 2001) and recognize the unfitness of traditional conceptions forthe deep social transformations occurred in recent years have led manyEuropean specialists to inquire into the relationship between youth andthe social construction of citizenship.

There are several reasons that help to explain the rise of this newapproach to the study of the incorporation of young people into adult life,as well as the main lines along which research is developing. In the firstplace, the new social and economic circumstances of the 1990s, which havevery directly influenced the lives of young people in advanced industrialsocieties, require a different perspective in order to explain how the newgenerations enter into adulthood. The paths that lead from childhood to

adulthood have multiplied and become exceedingly complicated; they havecome to be increasingly unpredictable, even to the point of involving ahigh risk of social exclusion for certain groups of young people (Bynnerand Silbereisen 2000). Just as postmodern discourse holds, we are facingan individualization and privatization of the problems of youth (Wallaceand Kovatcheva 1998) that prevents us from continuing to speak abouttypical trajectories determined by class origins or cultural capital (Evansand Furlong 1997). We therefore need to carry out a comprehensiveanalysis of the circumstances in which the lives of young people develop,considering the interrelationship among institutional processes, the

construction of identities, and social practices.Secondly, the meanings of age-linked status are now much more

ambiguous in European countries. They have blurred as the uncertaintyand complexity that surround youth transitions have increased. Until a

few years ago, adulthood in the European context was a pretty well-defined social category, with clear social, economic, and political meanings.However, the circumstances that used to make evident the achievement ofadulthood have become ambiguous and reversible. Leaving home, quittingschool, or getting married are, in many cases, temporary experiences thatcomplicate any attempt to define precisely the ‘markers’ of adulthood(Wyn and White 1997). The arrival point of youth, understood as atransition, is becoming more and more problematic. Although importantdifferences in the tempo of transition among European countries stillpersist, we can identify unceasing back and forth movements from one

position to the other, and we are confronted by the proliferation ofintermediate situations of semi-dependence and semi-autonomy. The mostimmediate consequence of these phenomena is that the adult status is nolonger useful for analysing the social incorporation of young people.

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Finally, the lengthening of the transition period brings about the socialvisibility of youth and elements of identification that create a certain kindof identity. Thus, youth ceases to be a mere transitional stage defined moreby absence than by presence (no work, no home, no partner), and turnsinto ‘a web of communications that can be extended beyond adulthood’(Feixa 1998: 54). While young people are in the midst of their complextransits towards economic independence and social autonomy, they arealso carrying out important actions in the public sphere: they consume,protest, express solidarity, establish networks of social interaction, obtaininstitutional acknowledgement, etc. It is necessary therefore to analyse theprocesses through which young people become citizens: the ways in whichthey change from being the target of the State’s protective action toappearing as active holders of rights and duties, endowed with the capacityto take part in public community affairs.

The above reasons amply justify the expectations that this line ofresearch has created among specialists in youth studies, as well as amongthose who approach the subject from related fields. There is no doubt thatthe issue agenda to be dealt with defines a highly relevant scientific andpolitical field (Coles 1995).2 Aside from their evident interest, theseapproaches also imply some important problems. The most relevant, inour opinion, is the slight attention paid to the second term of the youth-citizenship binomial. Without going into the theoretical discussions thatoppose liberals to communitarians or republicans, talking about youth andcitizenship forces us to consider certain basic issues: the differentcollective meanings of citizenship, the current images of citizenship, andthe relevance given to its different components (civil, social and political).However, youth studies frequently refer to citizenship only as a metaphorfor the complex and unclear incorporation of young people into the worldof adults. Thus, they fail to analyse the ways in which young peopleinterpret the rights and responsibilities connected with the status ofcitizenship or by which they express their membership in the community.In other words, research on youth and citizenship has not inquiredsufficiently into what being a citizen means in European societies.

A direct consequence of these views is that hardly any difference isestablished between becoming an adult and becoming a citizen, two termsthat are implicitly or explicitly made to be equivalent, in spite of thedistance that separates both processes today (Hall et al. 1998: 310�/11).Part of this confusion could be solved if, despite recognizing the

2. Both the European Commission and the Council of Europe have repeatedly insisted

on the the importance of linking citizenship themes to youth themes as a way to have

youth participate in the development of European society. The European Union’s

‘Youth in Action’ programme is a good example of the position.

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importance of civic rights, we place our emphasis on the substantivedimension of citizenship. That is, if we stress the way in which youngpeople develop and put into practice these rights and obligations. Fromthis perspective, citizenship is constructed socially through concreteexperiences and practices in public spaces. Young people become citizensnot when they are acknowledged to be adults, but when they makethemselves present in the public sphere, when they make use of the rightsthey are acquiring, and when they demand to participate in collectivedecision-making, in spite of the social and institutional bonds thatstructure their lives during this transitional phase.

The question that comes up immediately is: how can young people becitizens without being independent? The traditional concept of citizen wasbuilt upon the notion of autonomy, basically understood as economicindependence. As a result, this kind of independence, closely linked toaccess to the labour market, became the necessary prerequisite fordomestic and housing transitions; that is, for youth emancipation. Thisunderstanding of young people’s material independence as the basic keyfor full access to citizenship was one of the most frequently repeated ideasduring the first stages of research on citizenship and youth. In theirpioneering study, on several occasions Jones and Wallace (1992) pointedout that the full participation of young people in society basically dependson their achieving economic independence.

Circumstances have changed noticeably in recent decades. Thetraditional paths of access to economic independence have becomecomplicated. The obstacles to accessing the labour market (such asunemployment or precarious jobs), the extension of the period of formaleducation, or the difficulties involved in leaving the paternal/maternalhome inevitably lengthen the dependence of young people on their family.In only four years (1997�/2001) the family’s share in the income of EUyoung people, aged 15�/24, has risen from 45 to 55%. (Schizzerotto andGasperoni 2001).3 This context of growing dependence in whichEuropean youth lives today has important social consequences in areassuch as marriage and fertility rates and family models. Additionally, itcontributes to substantiate the image of youth as a period of prolonged‘quasi-citizenship’ in which young people are asked to be active and takeon civic responsibilities, but are not offered the socioeconomic conditionsnecessary for the effective exercise of their rights and their activeparticipation in the public sphere (Moran and Benedicto 2000, 2003a).

Nevertheless, there appear a number of factors that obscure theconsideration of economic independence as the indispensable key to the

3. In several European countries, such as Italy and Spain, the family supports over 68

and 62%, respectively, of the young people (Schizzerotto and Gasperoni 2001: 42).

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civic life of the young when analysing in detail the current situation ofyoung people in European societies. On one hand, economic dependenceon the family coexists with obvious forms of social and cultural autonomy(lifestyles, norms of social behaviour, personal relationships, consumptionhabits, etc.). Consequently, some authors speak of a period of ambiguousdependency (Ahier and Moore 1999). On the other hand, it is increasinglyevident that work is no longer the privileged locus where the identity ofEuropean youth is constituted and developed. It seems to have beenreplaced by involvement in leisure and consumer activities, which havebecome central elements for developing feelings of belonging (France1998). Additionally, we should not lose sight of the fact that, amongcertain groups of young people, the lack of work and family responsi-bilities, together with their greater dedication to training activities, favourstheir active involvement in community affairs to an even greater degreethan that of some adults who tend to restrict themselves to the sphere oftheir private affairs.

Thus, the difficulties involved in obtaining the necessary economicresources for emancipation constitute, undoubtedly, a significant struc-tural conditioning to young people’s access to citizenship. Yet at the sametime, there are other relational dimensions that endow them with a kind ofsocial autonomy, previously non-existent. The building of personalautonomy in situations of dependence or semi-dependence has becomeone of the defining features of the structural transformation of youth.(Bontempi 2004).

Becoming a citizen is, therefore, more than the mere formal acknowl-edgement of rights and duties, and cannot be simply identified with socialintegration. Being a citizen is a complex phenomenon in which institu-tional processes, cultural practices, and political actions are intertwined. Inthis sense, we will have to rethink the conception of citizenship, stressing itsdynamic, multidimensional character, and transferring emphasis oneconomic independence to other components related to the constructionof personal autonomy, such as capacities, competences, and feelings ofbelonging and participation. In this way, the focus of analysis is displacedtowards the acquisition of these resources and the necessary conditions fortheir activation, in order to bring about different forms of civicparticipation.

3. Empirically rethinking the concept of citizenship

One of the most prominent aspects in the current debate on citizenship isthe need to review traditional formulae in order to comprehend theprofound social changes taking place in contemporary societies. The

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uncertain and complex consequences of globalisation processes are

profoundly changing the relationship of individuals with their political

community and their role in the development of social and political

processes. Phenomena such as the increase in migrations, the alterations in

the structure of social inequalities, and the rise of new supranational

political formulae like the European Union are seriously undermining the

classic principles upon which the old concepts of citizen and citizenship

were established. Simultaneously, the difficulties of the classic conception

of citizenship in accounting for the different ways in which specific social

groups, such as young people, have access to and exercise the status of

citizenship are increasingly obvious.Various branches of social sciences have given disparate answers to these

challenges, which are difficult to summarize. With a critical re-reading of

T.H. Marshall’s work (1950) as a starting point, interesting debates on the

processes of restructuring citizenship have taken place (Somers 1993;

Kymlicka 1995; Walzer 1997; Siim 2000; Turner 1990, 2001; Crouch et al.2001). To these we must add the discussions on the construction of a

European citizenship. However, and to the detriment of empirical

research, in most cases theoretical speculation and a normative bias still

predominate.Undoubtedly, the difficulty in operationalizing the concept of citizen-

ship has a lot to do with this fact, given its broadness, ambiguity, and

strong ideological bias Nevertheless, it should not prevent us from paying

more attention to the social dynamics of citizenship, the analysis of how

citizenship works in certain historical contexts, and the characteristics

(institutional, cultural and political) that citizenship acquires in specific

social groups. A great deal of discussion has been carried out on civic

rights and responsibilities, but almost exclusively from a generic point of

view, as if we were dealing with abstract citizens. In contrast, there are few

empirical analyses on the meaning that citizenship bears for specific

citizens. Hall and Williamson allude to this dimension as ‘lived citizen-

ship’: ‘the meaning that citizenship actually has in people’s lives and the

ways in which people’s social and cultural backgrounds and material

circumstances affect their lives as citizens’ (1999: 2). From this

perspective, it is especially interesting to analyse empirically how citizen-

ship operates in youth, insofar as it is a social group with an evident civic

deficit,4 and whose citizenship identities, spaces, and practices are

subjected to an accelerated rate of change.

4. As Lockwood states, a situation of civic deficit can be defined as ‘a situation in which a

lack of resources prevents the exercise of rights that are formally enjoyed . . .’ (1996:

537).

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Along this line of analysis, our proposal of an empirical reformulation ofcitizenship is based on two fundamental elements. In the first place, adynamic and relational notion of citizenship in which social practices areplaced at the core of the argument. Instead of thinking about citizenship asan individual status, defined by the state’s attribution of diverse rights andthe ambiguous acknowledgement of certain responsibilities acquired onceand for all, it must be understood as a process whose contents andmeanings change in the course of the life trajectories of individuals, amongdifferent social groups, and according to specific historical contexts. Inaddition, these contents and meanings are defined by means of social,institutional and individual practices carried out in the public sphere.5

Margaret Somers concisely sums up this notion of citizenship: ‘ . . . Ipropose that citizenship be defined as an ‘‘instituted process’’ (Polanyi, 1957),i.e., citizenship is a set of institutionally embedded social practices. Thesepractices are contingent upon and constituted by networks of relationships andpolitical idioms that stress membership and universal rights and duties in anational community. Rather than a body of rights granted ‘‘ready-made’’ by thestate and attached to individual persons, however, citizenship rights are onlyone potential outcome of a configuration of national membership rules’(Somers 1993: 589).

The second principle is the recognition of the multidimensionality ofcitizenship, both as a theoretical notion and as an object of empiricalresearch. Citizenship is made up of several components, the specificinterrelation of which defines its social dynamics within a particularcontext or group. Therefore, recognizing the diversity of levels of analysisat which it can be studied implies building citizenship as an object ofsociological analysis. Much of the literature on the subject refers to threeconstituent elements (Garcıa and Lukes 1999; Kiviniemi 1999). First ofall, a formal or institutional level composed of the framework of rights andduties through which the relationship of citizenship is expressednormatively and institutionally. Questions relating to nationality, equality,and justice are most relevant at this primary level. Secondly, a cultural orideological level that refers to the complex relationships of belonging andinvolvement from which citizen identities are formed. Finally, a strictlysocietal level in which sociopolitical, governmental, and citizen practicesare developed andset within the institutional framework and citizencultures. This is the field where the practices of citizenship take place.

The pinpointing of these essential elements makes it possible to analysethe processes of their mutual influence, adjustment, clash, and conflict.Consequently, if we reintroduce the diachronic dimension into our

5. According to a feminist perspective, the analysis of citizenship practices should not be

confined to the public sphere (Siim 2000).

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argument, we can put forward some hypotheses on the consequences ofdistinct rates of change for each of these elements. Some of the problemsobserved in several European countries when analysing young people’saccess to citizenship could be better understood by taking into account thedisparity, and even the contradiction, among the evolution of the legal andinstitutional frameworks, young people’s civic identities, and the practicescarried out in the public sphere.

Special attention will be paid in this paper to the cultural andideological aspects of citizenship. As previously stated, we are focusingon the construction of analytic tools for studying how young people buildtheir civic identities. Additionally, we are bearing in mind that culturalelements play a fundamental role in the shaping of sociopoliticalphenomena and define the range of possibilities within which the actors’interpretations, discourses, and behaviours occur. They form the grammarof political action (Cefaı 2001).

4. The cultural dimensions of citizenship: An analytical framework

More than two decades have past since several authors made anannouncement about ‘bringing the culture back in’ to sociopoliticalanalysis (Wuthnow 1984; Alexander 1989; Swidler 1986; Welch 1993). Itseems now to be widely acknowledged that, to put it briefly, culturalfactors contribute decisively to many aspects to the configuration of civiclife: i.e., the creation of collective identities, the development of civicaction, and the design and functioning of institutional systems. Never-theless, the building of citizen identities constitutes the field where thecultural dimension becomes more relevant.

Consequently, the founding character of the cultural dimension in thestudy of citizenship constitutes the theoretical basis of our analyticalframework. From this starting point, the framework we now present seeksto identify and discuss the fundamental dimensions of the socialrepresentations of citizenship. It must not be forgotten that our ultimatepurpose is to design a research tool to make possible the analysis of thediscourses, images and attitudes concerning what it means to be a citizenfor today’s young people. The empirical basis of this analytic scheme is theresult of qualitative research on citizenship conceptions among Spanishyouth.6 The techniques used included focus groups and in-depth

6. These results were presented in Moran and Benedicto (2003b) and in J. Benedicto, E.

Luque and M.L. Moran, ‘El acceso de los jovenes a la ciudadanıa’ (Research Report

2005). A first draft of the analysis appeared in ‘The civic identities of Spanish young

people’ presented at conference ‘Young people 2002’, Keele University, 2002.

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interviews carried out with young people of different socio-culturalstatuses and diverse life circumstances. The predominant meanings ofcitizenship among Spanish youth do not differ greatly from the onesshown by research in other European countries, especially the one carriedout by Ruth Lister with British young people (Lister et al . 2003; Smithet al . 2005). Nevertheless, what is interesting to us is not the concreteresults of Spanish youth, but the analytical concepts that may beconstructed on the basis of the data collected. These concepts serve asthe foundation for the analytical scheme of the social representations ofcitizenship among youth that will be developed in the following pages.

The conceptual and historical complexity of citizenship makes itdifficult to agree on its characteristic components. Taking J. Leca’sproposal (1990) about the cultural foundations of modern citizenship asour starting point, we constructed our analytical framework along twomain axes. The specific contents, images, and concepts that shape thedifferent visions of citizenship present in a particular social group (in ourcase, young people) are arranged along these axes. These two axes arebelonging and involvement . For each one, we will discuss the fundamentalcomponents of social representations and propose different categorizationsof these variables in order to define the basic features of the conceptions ofcitizenship that can be identified empirically.

4.1. The axis of belonging

Being a citizen implies, basically, being part of a specific political community,a fact that is made explicit in a specific kind of collective identity: thecitizen identity. This identity is certainly complex, with universalisticmeanings coexisting with references to memberships derived from‘primary links’ (family, tribe, generation, religion, gender, etc.). In orderto comprehend this kind of identity we must distinguish between twofundamental questions: How does one become part of the community? andWhat kind of community does one form part of?

As to the first question, it is evident that belonging to a group meansbeing acknowledged by others as a member and feeling oneself included init. Therefore, the answer to our first question includes objective andsubjective dimensions. From an objective point of view, we must considerthe mechanisms by which the individual becomes a member of thecommunity. In contrast to other collective identities in which belonging isbased on a series of attributes that individuals endow with meaning,modern citizenship expresses membership collectively through theacknowledgement (by oneself and by others) of rights and duties that aredeveloped institutionally. Although from this formal perspective the

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enjoyment of rights and duties is associated with the legal acknowl-edgement of the condition of being a citizen, current reflection oncitizenship has laid emphasis on the structural barriers that often make itdifficult for citizens to have access to and exercise these rights (Siim 2000;Sassen 2003).

This latter situation is especially important in the case of young people(Jones and Wallace 1992) and constitutes one of the fundamental elementsin the configuration of their feelings of belonging. The meanings youngpeople confer to civic rights and responsibilities are debated andnegotiated on the basis of their life experiences, the social factors thatstructure their access to public life, and the processes of inclusion andexclusion in which they are involved. These meanings will help to explainthe peculiar combination that, in each case, young people establishbetween rights and responsibilities.7

Available research points to a close relationship between the conceptionthat citizens have of their rights and duties and the cultural and politicalcontext of their daily lives (Conover et al . 1991). One of the mostoutstanding results of our own research on Spanish youth is the absolutepreeminence of the language of rights, whereas the language of duties isonly used sporadically and in a limited way (Moran and Benedicto 2003b).On the contrary, in a similar study on British youth, Lister et al . (2003):247) pointed out that ‘the young people we interviewed found it markedlymore difficult to identify their rights than they did their responsibilities’.The different political contexts of Spain and Great Britain, along withtheir disparate cultural traditions, could explain relatively well theopposed views that the young people of the two countries hold of thecivic rights-duties binomial8.

Along with the objective aspects of belonging, we must also keep inmind the subjective aspects. In order to belong to the community, one alsohas to feel oneself to be a member of it . The existence of a common ‘us’ thatgoes beyond the differences that distinguish one group from another andgives meaning to belonging must be admitted. Traditionally, this ‘citizenus’ has been understood in national terms, resting on the identification

7. In recent years, the balance between rights and responsibilities has become one of the

axes of political and ideological discussion. The neoliberal challenge of the 1980s has

almost achieved the substitution of the language of rights �/ characteristic of the

political discourse of the post-war welfare state �/ for the language of obligations and

responsibilities (Roche 1992; Bellamy and Greenaway 1995).

8. The predominance of rights in the Spanish case is directly related to the historical

process of construction of a democratic citizenship following the transition to

democracy (Benedicto 2006).On the other hand, in the British case the predominant

political discourses during the past two decades, first from Thatcherism and then

from New Labour, have centred on the duties and obligations of citizens (Dean 2004).

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with a common history and culture. However, in addition to nationalidentity, the salience of other ways of belonging is increasingly evident forunderstanding youth civic identities. When referring to young people,these ways of belongings are multiple and complex. For example,according to many specialists, leisure time and consumer practices havebecome the main identity reference for constructing feelings of collectivebelonging among many European young people today (France 1998;Vinken 2004). Nevertheless, other young people, such as many youngMoslems in French and British inner cities (to give two well-knownexamples), seem to build their citizen identity primarily on ethnic orreligious identification (Tietze 2002; Hussain and Begguley 2005).Additionally, on many other occasions, uncertainty and ambiguity prevailwhen it comes to specifying clear feelings of belonging beyond a vagueidentification with a set of traditions and symbols considered characteristicof the adult world.9

The second element to consider when analysing citizen identities is thetype of community in which the citizen is and/or feels included . Aside fromthe community institutional characteristics, it is important to study thecriteria that citizens use to define it. Two criteria should be considered. Inthe first place, the spatial framework in which the community is locatedand within which citizen identity is understood. Belonging to a specificcommunity implies the existence of certain reference ‘maps’ the individualuses to place it within definite spatial coordinates and to give meaning tohis/her membership. Of course, these spatial frameworks vary accordingto the type of society and are transformed in the course of their historicalevolution. In short, they do not have a monolithic character. In ouranalysis of focus groups with young Spanish people, three broad categoriesabout civic community can be distinguished.

Above all, there is a local or particular membership in which identity isfundamentally defined with reference to the spaces in which primary orlocal groups (family, peer group, ethnic group, religious group, etc.) arelocated. Local communities, adscriptive groups, and interpersonal rela-tionship networks occupy a central position in this kind of representation.In the second place, we have to consider membership in a socially definedpolitical community where identity presupposes the existence of some kindof collectivity that is more inclusive than the primary groups. The most

9. This is precisely the predominant situation in the Spanish case. The majority of

young people do not use well-defined criteria of civic belonging in their discourse.

Only when a reference to immigration is introduced, a vision of citizenship based on a

hypothetical national identity is articulated.The immigrant functions as ‘the other’, as

the mirror image that demands thinking about what and, above all, who is a Spaniard

and who is a citizen (Moran and Benedicto 2003b: 120).

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widely extended form of this kind of representation is the nation-state, afact that explains the diffuse tendency to identify citizenship withnationality. Finally, there is a third kind of spatial framework that couldbe called global or supranational . In this case, identity is based on someform of representation of the existence of a supranational or transnationalcommunity with inclusive capacity. The range of possibilities is wide: frommembership in supra-state entities such as the European Union todifferent proposals about a ‘world or cosmopolitan citizenship’ based on aradical conception of human rights (Bottomore 1992; Held 1995).

On many occasions people do not perceive these three identity spaces inan exclusive way, but assume rather naturally the multiplicity of identityreferences. Nevertheless, for the majority of young people, the localdimension possesses special significance. Just as our research confirmed,the space shared with others in the family, at school and, above all, withfriends, makes up the tangible referent of membership throughout a goodpart of youth. Thus, the neighbourhood, the street, and the places forleisure activities constitute the main scenarios where young people formtheir identities (Hall et al. 1999). As the young person takes on adultresponsibilities, this tangible referent becomes diluted in favour of spacesthat are more distant from life experiences and have a greater symboliccharge. Therefore, the challenge of the European project includes theconstruction of a shared space to be converted into a tangible referent ofbelonging for youth identities.

In addition to the spatial framework, individuals define the communityof which they feel members by means of a certain logic of identification .Different forms of conceiving the links of solidarity that unite citizenscome up in the discourses employed by individuals and groups whendiscussing their civic memberships. These conceptions of social solidarityreveal different views on the nature of the community to which onebelongs.10 The discourse of the young people we worked with exhibitedthe following kinds of logic of identification.

First of all, traditional identification . In this case, membership isexpressed with the language, values, and symbols that depict thecommunity as something ‘natural’ or inevitable. The community ariseseither from tradition or from the insertion into informal networks of

10. Craig Calhoun establishes an interesting distinction among three forms of social

membership that also includes three ways of understanding solidarity: first of all,

communities, constituted by means of dense networks of interpersonal relationships;

secondly, categories based on cultural similarity or on the juridical equivalence of

people, such as the nation; and, finally, the public category, constituted by mutual

involvement in discourses that define public space. ‘Citizenship, by contrast to

community or categorial nationality, is a specific mode of belonging directly

dependent on public space’ (Calhoun 1999: 219).

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interpersonal relationships. Secondly, there is an egalitarian identification .In this case, the community of membership is represented in terms thatare radically opposed to those of the first type. In egalitarian discourses,membership is defined by values of equality among members and by acertain degree of ‘self-government’ of the membership. The third categoryis individualistic identification . Individuals and groups establish their linksof membership according to a logic of competence where frequentestimations of cost and benefit take place. Within this logic of identifica-tion, the links of solidarity among citizens are weak and, occasionally, non-existent. The final category is state identification . This may be the type ofcitizen identity that is closest to a traditional conception of politics. Here,community membership is explained and legitimated ‘from above’,through the actions of state or quasi-state organisms that define thenature, spheres and practices of citizenship. Spanish youngters opt for onelogic of identification or another depending on the type of transition inwhich they are immersed.

4.2. The axis of involvement

The second axis of our analytical framework, involvement, is anindispensable element of the idea of citizenship and, more specifically,of democratic citizenship. Although the reality of our democratic life mayat times cast doubt on this, acknowledging someone’s citizen status impliesoffering him/her the possibility of participating in the affairs that affectthe community, to the point of turning this possibility into a civic duty.

Since we intend to study the cultural dimensions of citizenship, we areless interested in the specific activities developed or in the channelsthrough which involvement is carried out, than in the meaning theprotagonists attribute to involvement. Consequently, the particularfeatures of youth political participation and the structural obstacles thatblock it should not be confused with young people’s representations of thisparticipation. Two aspects should be considered in these representations:the necessary competences for involvement and the nature of theinvolvement.

In order for involvement in the public sphere to be an effective reality, a‘citizenship conscious of itself ’ is needed, as Jean Leca (1990) maintains. Itsthree main components are: (a) a belief in the intelligibility of the politicalworld; (b) empathy, that is, the capacity to put oneself in the place ofothers in order to understand their interests and justifications; and (c)civility, or the acknowledgement of a common adhesion and a responsi-bility toward social order, despite diversity. The participants must also beacquainted with the rules and mechanisms of functioning of the public

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sphere in order to understand the implications of their own and others’behaviour; and they must have the necessary capacities to carry out actionsin a terrain that transcends the private sphere. To summarize, citizensmust possess the indispensable resources to consider themselves as actorsand to present and legitimize themselves as such.

However, the definition of these resources depends on multiple social,cultural, and historical factors. Thus, for example, the specific way inwhich each social group understands its own identity as a member of thepolitical community will cause it to regard some competences moreimportant than others. Similarly, the impact of increasing politicaldisaffection and the emergence of new political spaces and actors incontemporary public life require a revision of the traditional conception ofcivic competence that reduces it to a mere individual feeling. What isimportant is not to lose sight of the fact that, by defining the resources thatmake civic involvement possible, a certain image of the citizen and of thecommitment that links him/her to the community is constructed.In theirpreviously quoted research, Lister et al . state that a caring attitudetowards others and an active participation in the community are clearlyattributes that the majority of young people identify with the ideal of agood citizen (Lister et al . 2003: 244; Smith et al . 2005). Therefore, forthese British youngsters civic competence is not the belief that aninfluence can be exerted in political affairs, as stated by Almond and Verba(1963), but rather doing something on behalf of others and contributing tothe community through constructive participation.

What these resources and competences for involvement are, whatrelative importance they are given, how they are acquired, and what socialrequisites are necessary to activate them are some of the aspects to beinvestigated in the subject’s discourses. In the case of young people, theseissues are central to an understanding of their representations ofcitizenship, insofar as the social processes that structure youth transitionstoday are transforming their conceptions of competent citizenship and themechanisms for achieving it.11

The second component to be studied is the nature of civic involvement ,its characteristics, and the importance attributed to it. In this case, themost relevant element, and the one that best discriminates among thedifferent conceptions of citizenship, is the degree of presence andprotagonism citizens are granted in public affairs. This is, doubtless, anissue in which normative discourses have great repercussions, so that itwill be necessary to analyse them in each specific case. However, we must

11. An interesting research subject would be the comparison between the conceptions of

the competent citizen held by the adults who act as gatekeepers to citizenship and the

conceptions of the young people themselves.

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enter into the terrain of concrete practices while attending to the types ofreasoning used to justify them and to the position attributed to thesubjects in the development of their citizen practices.

We have identified three different conceptions of civic involvement inthe discourse of young people. In the first place, we have disengagement . Inthis case, involvement is defined negatively, that is, in terms of thedistance between the citizen and the community. Here, the most importantissue will be to analyse how this distance is justified. In a way,disengagement is a synonym of exclusion or marginalization �/ voluntaryor not �/ from civic life. Secondly, there is conformity. It is expressed by theobservance of community norms that are not even questioned, so that,even though positive feelings of involvement exist, they will not give riseto claims of new rights, or allow citizens to imagine new ways ofparticipation beyond the conventional ones. Finally, we have activism . Inthis conception, subjects depict themselves as active members or, at least,as potential participants in the community with the possibility of claimingnew rights.

Given the complex and multiform nature of civic involvement, thediscourses tend to vary according to the type of sphere or the kind ofinvolvement that we are referring to. Therefore, one of the most frequentconclusions in current research on youth political participation is,precisely, the need to overcome hurried statements on the apathy ordisinterest of new generations, in favour of a much more complexconception that takes into account how young people conceive of andexperience ‘the political’ (O’Toole et al. 2003). Only by doing so, will it bepossible to explain why many young people feel excluded from the publicsphere when referring to institutional politics, while they maintainpositions closer to activism when alluding to protest movements or toissues they think affect their lives directly. This apparent contradictionconstitutes one of the characteristic features of young people’s civicexperience and is a key element for understanding their conceptions ofcitizenship (Bettin 2001).

5. Conclusion

We have tried in this article to take an in-depth look at the relationshipbetween youth and citizenship, paying specific attention to the secondissue, contrary to the predominant trend of previous research. Our point isthat, in order to comprehend the position occupied by young people in ourEuropean societies and to explain their integration processes into thesocial and political community, it is necessary to analyse thoroughly whatbeing a citizen means in contemporary societies and how young people

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become citizens through a process closely related to their transitions toadulthood.

The empirical reformulation of the concept of citizenship that stressesits dynamic and multidimensional character allows us to go beyond thedebate about whether at present young people are or are not true citizens,given the growing difficulties for their emancipation. The fundamentalissue is not achieving the independence that supposedly defines adulthood,but rather acquiring the necessary competences and motivations for actingin the public sphere. Therefore, the real debate should refer to what kindof citizens young people become. This is so because these young people donot become citizens, in the sociopolitical sense employed here, onlythrough the formal acknowledgement by the State of a set of rights, nor byovercoming the economic dependence that prevents their emancipation.Young people become citizens in progressive and complex ways. Theylearn to be citizens in social interactions, in contexts of experience thatendow what they say and do with meaning (Smith et al . 2005: 440). Theybuild their citizen identities through social representations of whatcitizenship means and involves. Consequently, in some cases it will bean active and responsible citizenship, while in others, on the contrary, itwill be a passive, dependent one.

The empirical analysis of these social representations will result in abetter knowledge of what the different groups of young people understandby citizenship, the way in which they understand themselves as citizens,and the meaning that citizenship has in their lives. In order to carry outthis empirical analysis, the analytic scheme put forward seems particularlyadequate. In each case, the more or less unstable and contradictorycombination of the positions people hold regarding the different criteria ofbelonging and involvement will permit us to assert empirically thedifferent conceptions of citizenship involved. In contrast to the frequentabstract classifications of ideal types of citizenship, this way of proceedingcan contribute to the building of an empirical sociology of the culturalfoundations of citizenship. This subject is especially interesting in the caseof young people.

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