Citizenhood: Rethinking Multicultural Citizenship

In its comprehensive meaning, citizenship should ideally bestow a sense of belonging in the large social group, as well as a stake in the state’s cultural, political and economic life, topped by a sense of solidarity, which transcends ethno-religious differences. Unfortunately, many nation states fail these tasks and not all of their citizens are offered such an embracing welcome. Because of the massive immigrations of the last decades this difficulty has intensified and many states struggle with the problem of maintaining a sense of belonging of its citizens with the state. This article proposes a named new concept, “Citizenhood”, which may provide a better way to reconcile ideas of cultural and social rights with the idea of citizenship in contemporary multicultural liberal and democratic nation states. In particular, the new concept strives to alleviate the situation of groups upon whom citizenship does not confer the sense of ‘being at home’. Improving the feelings of these groups is important not only for their own well-being, but for the state as well, since their feeling of alienation from the community at large weakens social cohesion and may fuel continuous tensions. Scholars have suggested different alternatives to overcome these difficulties but a solution is not yet in sight. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of previous suggestions and elaborates on the benefits of the proposed new concept.


Introduction
In recent decades, western countries have been experiencing a growing international migration, which challenges the previously homogeneous nature of many nation states and intensifies inner tensions (Geddes 2016).This reality has put multiculturalism theory and politics into question (Malik 2015), and it seems that despite ongoing attempts by scholars of political philosophies, a solution to the complex issues of citizenship and multiculturalism has not been found yet.
The idea of citizenship in a democracy has gradually evolved over the last centuries from membership in a political community (Abowitz and Harnish 2006) into a multidimensional concept.The contemporary concept of citizenship includes the imposition of various obligations, combined with civil, political and social rights, such as those required to guarantee individual liberties, political participation, and the basic resources for living with dignity (Marshall 2006) in a community, nation state or other collectivity (Yuval-Davis 1999).In recent decades, however, the original purpose of citizenship to prevent society's division into privileged and unprivileged has been transformed into an instrument of social bordering, exclusion and hierarchy (Yiftachel 2016b).Nowadays, it is often used in an exclusionary way, differentiating between those who are entitled to certain rights and those who are not (Joppke and Morawska 2014).For many years, the concept of citizenship lacked reference to substantive issues of cultural belonging (Delanty 2002).However, being a citizen in its comprehensive meaning, should ideally bestow a sense of belonging in a social group (Amit and Bar-Lev 2015).Belonging, as Yuval-Davis (2006) states 'is about emotional attachment, about feeling "at home" ' (p. 197), and there is an extensive involvement of emotions in the issue of citizenship and the way it is constructed (Jones 2005;Mookherjee 2005;Zembylas 2013).Citizenship should provide a sense of familiarity and safety, as well as a stake in the state's cultural, political and economic life, in its plans and visions for the future and in its achievements and failures, topped by a sense of solidarity -a term that conveys 'attitudes of mutual acceptance, cooperation and mutual support in time of need, which transcend ethno-religious differences' (Banting and Kymlicka 2015, p. 5), and 'an ethic of membership' that is the foundation for social justice (p.4).
Unfortunately, in many nation states, not all citizens are offered an embracing welcome.Some, usually historic or immigrant ethnic and national minorities,1 are not invited by the majority to share this sense of belonging.Taylor (1998) asserts that this is an inherent paradox of democracies, whose inclusive nature of a government of all the people creates a necessity of a high degree of cohesion.This need leads to artificial calls for unity, in which citizens -usually those belonging to the majority -are encouraged by political leaders and by other citizens of their own group, to feel differently towards different groups of citizens in the public domain, based on their gender, race, ethnicity or religion, allowing 'effective citizenship' to impact the construction of full citizenship rights (Johnson 2010).Exclusionary practices deeply affect historic national minorities, as well as immigrant minorities, who are also typically not included in the majority's definition of the character of the nation state, despite their identification with their receiving country.While the formers' national feelings are usually seen as a threat to the nation state, the latters' are often treated by the majority as infiltrators who came to exploit the state's resources (Koopmans 2010).Yet another marginalized group exists, that of citizens and minorities who feel alienated from what the state stands for and even object to and resist the state's values.All these minority groups are thus living with a constant sense of being an unwanted stranger in one's own home.
For the state, both types of marginalized groups are problematic as their exclusion weakens social cohesion and may fuel continuous tension and struggle over the cultural and national character of the state and its public sphere.It is important to stress that while the state should attempt to create a sense of belonging for all its citizens, it cannot force any of them to share this feeling, and should accept Taylor's (1997b) principle of 'deep diversityallowing different levels of linkage to the state, without denying citizens of their rights based on their sense of belonging.
Scholars have suggested different alternatives to solve to this tension.But, as will be discussed later, further thinking and additional ideas are still required to find a way to overcome the animosity and estrangement between different ethnic and cultural groups who live in the same state, struggling to determine its character and nature.This paper draws on previous suggestions and proposes a new named concept 'Citizenhood' substituting the suffix 'ship' with 'hood' thus conveying a sense of belonging to a body of persons or a particular character or class.This new concept and adhering to what it stands for, may resolve some of the above mentioned tensions or at lease hold them in balance.This idea suggests creating an additional overarching identity (or super-identity) that embraces all members of society, without requiring them to waive their distinct identities; a superordinate identity that extends the boundaries of the collective, to which all citizens can develop a sense of belonging.Without belittling the importance of the name (which is significant), there is more to Citizenhood than just a name change.Citizenhood is a whole new concept that requires novel attitudes and actions by the government, the citizens, the academia and social groups.In what follows the paper elaborates on how this concept may provide an improved way to reconcile ideas of cultural and social rights with the idea of citizenship in contemporary multicultural liberal and democratic nation states.
After discussing, in Section 2, the tensions over ownership of the public sphere in divided societies, the paper analyses in Section 3 the existing alternative solutions.The novelty, advantages and dilemmas of the Citizenhood concept are described in Section 4. In this section the paper also deliberates the difference in treatment of non-liberal minorities and the issue of historical national minorities.Discussion and conclusions are set out in Section 5.

Struggle over ownership of the public sphere
In recent decades, in an attempt to resolve issues related to minorities' status and collective rights, cultural rights have become a recognized element of citizenship in democratic states (Kymlicka 1995;Rosaldo 1997;Parekh 2000).A fundamental principle of such multiculturalism is that an individual's identity is tightly connected to her group's collective identity, as this is the source from which individuals derive their ideas of what is appropriate for them to be (Taylor 1997).Isaiah Berlin (1969) ' (p. 23).Based on this understanding, there is a wide consensus nowadays that cultural minority groups should be allowed to lead their lives and raise their children according to their particular cultural practices and norms, as in the absence of this option minorities are forced to choose between assimilation into the majority or living on the margins of society (Kymlicka 1995;Tamir 1998) 2 .Collective rights, though, are not enough to solve the issue of belonging.Since the nation state model remains the most viable of all, despite predictions of its 'extinction' (Iglesias, Stojanović, and Weinblum 2013;Yiftachel 2016), we must explore ways to enable minorities to share a sense of belonging in the collective 'cultural intimacy' (Herzfeld 2014) without losing their independent identity.This is extremely important, as in most countries, nationwide solidarity is typically fragile, if not receding (Banting and Kymlicka 2015), which weakens acceptance of minorities into the 'we-ness' of the majority.
One of the salient obstacles to the challenge of creating a reality in which all groups can feel 'at home' is the reluctance of each group to waive its desire to dominate the public sphere and specifically, the state's symbols and ambiance.Sometimes, as will be discussed later, a minority may try to change the country's mentality and way of life completely, imposing its own norms and symbols on the majority.Usually, however, it is the majority who wants to control the state's character, while refusing to give the minorities any foothold in its formulation.Examples of such situations include the debate in European countries over the Muslim niqab and the ban over wearing it in public (Fernando 2010;Moors 2009) and the gap between the law and actual state of Arabic language in public communication in Israel (Saban and Amara 2002).In both cases, the majority rejects the cultural presence of the minority -whether immigrant or national historic minorities -in the public sphere due to a sense of discomfort or fear of losing dominance.In such a reality, although members of minorities are considered equal citizens, it is impossible for them to feel as if they belong to the state; instead, they feel like unwanted, merely tolerated, guests in their own home.

3
Is there a solution in sight?
In the introduction to his book Blood and Belonging, Michael Ignatieff (2010) discusses the common belief that only national self-determination can satisfy such a sense of belonging.A similar idea is that of belonging to 'fundamental cultural groups' (FCGs), which Mautner defines as groups that regulate comprehensive and profound aspects of their members' lives and provide answers to existential questions such as 'What is the meaning of life?' 'What life is it appropriate to live?' 'What is the meaning of evil, suffering, and causality in human beings' lives?' 'Is there a God?' and 'Is there life after death?' (2008, p. 283).Based on the breadth and depth of such regulation, Mautner (2008) suggests that people attribute far greater importance to their belonging to an FCG than to any other identity group to which they may belong, such as gender or profession.In Ignatieff's view, though, belonging can also be satisfied by what he calls civic nationalism, a sense of belonging to a community of citizens with equal rights who share a set of political practices and values rather than blood (or FCG) relations.Such a sense of belonging, Ignatieff (2010) says, creates a form of 'civil patriotism' that is more democratic than national patriotism, because it encompasses all citizens.
Ignatieff himself doubts the likelihood of this idea's realization in practice, as he recognizes the fact that nationalist sentiment typically overrides all other forms of belonging, including family and friends, grounded in the belief that one cannot be protected unless one has a nation to protect him/her.Nationalist sentiment is further fueled by the impact of collective memory, especially in large groups with collective trauma in their past (Volkan 2001(Volkan , 2004)), as is the case in some of the majority and some of the minority groups.Such groups tend to believe that their sovereign nationality is their only protection against existential threats that constantly await them (Keynan 2015a(Keynan , 2016)).Moreover, Ignatieff's civil nationalism can be expected to increase the exclusion of and intensify the conflict with totalizing communities (Coser 1974cited in Walzer 2005), which rejects democratic and liberal values altogether, and whose pious observance overrides all other forms of belonging, including close family, with the same ferocity as nationalistic sentiments.At the same time, in cases where these communities are considered part of the national majority, such as the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) community in Israel or evangelist communities in the US, they may join forces with the same majority whose democratic civic identity they reject, to exclude ethnic immigrants or historic national minorities.The liberal center thus faces a two-fold challenge: one vis-à-vis the ethnic/national minorities and one vis-à-vis the non-liberal totalizing communities.
The question is, therefore, whether it is possible to create a civic identity that is more inclusive, promotes solidarity and a sense of belonging (Banting and Kymlicka 2015), and at the same time does not require waiving either the separate value systems or the national statehood.The idea is to facilitate an additional, overarching civic identity, which includes both the totalizing orthodox groups and the historic national and immigrant minorities, but does not impose a choice between the original sub-group and the overarching identity.The issue of totalizing groups and the issue of historic national groups are allegedly two separate issues, but often, especially in multination states, the former includes also the latter.
To promote social cohesion in diverse and 'multinational' societies, Kymlicka focuses on the relations with the ethnic/national minorities, suggesting a 'multination federalism' with two main features: 'a federation of quasi-federal sub-units in which the minority group forms a local majority, and can thereby exercise meaningful forms of self-government' (2011, p. 6), and recognition of the minority's language as an official state language.While recognizing the minority's language is worth having and feasible, it alone does not solve the problem, as is well reflected in Israel, where Arabic is an official language but most Jewish Israelis do not acknowledge it as part of their citizenship or even of Israeli public communication (Saban and Amara 2002).The other element of Kymlicka's suggestion may work under what he calls 'favorable conditions', one of which is the territorial concentration of the historic national minority.Even where this condition exists, there is no guarantee that a multinational federation will solve ethnic conflicts, as scholars have shown that ethnofederalism or autonomy arrangements have rarely worked when challenged by severe nationalist divisions (Roeder 2012).Furthermore, multinational federalism offers no solution to those ethnic/national minority citizens who wish to belong to the majority.In fact, it may even worsen their position -under a quasi-federal arrangement that offers local selfgovernment, the majority may feel released from any obligation to include the minority citizens while the zealous members of the minority may consider such integrative aspirations as a betrayal of their own ethnic group.Federalism is also incapable of meeting the challenges posed by religious totalizing communities, which are often geographically dispersed, and frequently attempt to disseminate their beliefs among the non-pious majority, hoping to gradually impose their way of life on additional sectors of society.

Citizenhood -the concept and its dilemmas
This is where the idea of Citizenhood comes in.The notion of Citizenhood suggests that the state recognizes a multilevel civil identity of its citizens, not merely as a legal status, but as an intrinsic part of its overarching identity, which embraces all members of society equally, regardless of their distinct identities.The main difference between Citizenhood and other theories of equal citizenship, including collective rights to all groups, is the development of an overarching civil identity.Citizenhood does not settle for accepting otherness by the majority, nor for welcoming minority members to join the majority's identity.It calls for facilitating and nourishing a top layer of a comprehensive national identity that comprises the diverse identities of the different groups, but does not replace them nor make them redundant.
The idea is that the state acknowledges and legitimizes the preservation of one's national or other fundamental cultural identity, as part of one's additional, superordinate identity to which all citizens can develop a sense of belonging.Being an overarching identityrecognized by the state -it may replace the inherently combative majority-minority power relations, with a new formula of belonging.
Citizenhood combines and expands on several concepts, taking them one step further to create a multilevel civil identity and sense of commitment.Its main goal is to enable citizens as individuals and as groups to preserve their cultural and national tradition and belonging, while at the same time to belong to the broader circle of citizens, sharing aspirations for freedom and hope for all, and for a country with greater civic achievements -economic and cultural prosperity, a high-achieving educational system and better quality of life.A belief that such achievements are possible will enable all groups to feel pride over their country, an important notion for accomplishing and improving civil and moral goals (Rorty 1998).This concept requires more than the removal of all institutional obstacles that prevent individual members of minorities from integrating in the majority if they so desire (Barry 2001;Fraser 2000); and more than granting collective rights to cultural minorities who wish to preserve their separate culture and tradition (Kymlicka 1995(Kymlicka , 2003(Kymlicka , 2011)).It requires a politicalcultural-educational effort that adopts Rorty's (1989) view of a diverse community, joined together by an ethos of resistance to suffering, while developing a tradition of aspiring to freedom and hope despite a history of conflicts and struggle.Developing such a tradition entails the inclusion of historical and cultural heroes, which used to represent conflicting groups but are accepted as representing a society that overcame inner conflicts and to which therefore all citizens can develop a sense of belonging.In a way, this is an expansion of the collective memory of the state, to include the memories and narratives of all its groups (Keynan 2015b).As Fraser (2000) showed, excluded groups tend to accentuate their difference as part of their struggle to be accepted as equal.The option of 'different and alike', of being 'who you are' as a member of a sub-group, and at the same time a legitimate, accepted part of the whole, and an equal representative of whole, reduces animosity and moderates the need to emphasize differences on the expanse of solidarity.Such a process does not require the abolition of one group's narrative in favor of the other, but enables, with time, acceptance of all of them, one next to the other.
The main barrier to Ignatieff's idea of civil patriotism lies, as he himself puts it, in the strength of national sentiments.Since Citizenhood does not require the abandoning of membership in one's own national or other fundamental group, it may increase the likelihood that this notion will promote a closer cooperation between people who believe in liberal democratic ideas but belong to different religions or FCGs.Citizenhood's concept of legitimizing the existence of multiple identities, while embracing them under the overarching identity of the state, may work also based on Rawls's concept of overlapping consensus.Rawls states that while there is no one comprehensive doctrine of justice, which is accepted by all, 'in a well-ordered society3 the political conception is affirmed by … a reasonable overlapping consensus', which is supported 'by the reasonable though opposing religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines ' (2001, p. 32).This idea can be used metaphorically in the concept of citizenhood, as the different large groups in a nation state may agree on the principle of multilevel identities, although the reasoning for accepting this concept may stem from different perspectives.

The problem of totalizing non-liberal sub-groups
Granting collective rights to non-liberal sub-groups poses a dilemma to liberalism as a theory and moral practice that rejects oppression.Allowing non-liberal communities to apply oppressive practices in the name of liberalism's own values of tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism, creates an obvious internal contradiction.The main risk, however, is the power it gives to non-liberal FCGs to deny their own members access to human rights based on cultural autonomy (Jones 1999).This may turn Citizenhood, just like any theory of collective rights, into a two-edged sword: On one hand, liberal values negate the imposition of these same liberal values upon non-liberal minorities, while on the other hand, they stand the risk of legitimizing oppressive practices of non-liberal groups (Barry 2001;Fraser 2000), thus abandoning their members to repression.
Looking for a solution to these risks, Kymlicka (1998) suggests that collective rights should be granted on the condition that group membership is a matter of self-identity, which is not imposed by the state or by the group itself; that no group may violate the basic human, civil or political rights of their members; and that individuals are free to question and reject any inherited or previously adopted identity, if they so choose, and exercise an effective right of exit from any identity group.The Citizenhood concept adds to Kymlicka's crucial conditions.It gives members of non-liberal groups the option of multi-level identity, which may empower them to materialize Kymlicka's conditions.The option to belong both to the sub group and to the overarching identity may help to relax the fear of becoming displaced, torn off the community one chose to exit with no identity to cling to.
Totalizing non-liberal sub-groups refuse to educate their children and youth to the basic ideas of the liberal-democratic state.This practice creates two additional problems: those who grow up in these communities are usually unaware of their options under Kymlicka's conditions or the value foundation of liberal theories; being unaware of the basic rules of democracy, which they may delegitimize, some of these groups use their comparative autonomy and political representation to impose part of their values on the entire country.Confronting this dilemma, Walzer (2005) claims that the democratic state has a right to educate all its future citizens on the meaning of citizenship and democratic values, in order to ensure continuity of its values, and therefore totalizing communities should not be exempt from civil education.This may alarm totalizing communities that wish to preserve their segregation and separation from other communities.Supporting Walzer's view, the Citizenhood concept may help to reduce totalizing communities' objection to such a move.The fact that Citizenhood is based on multilevel identity that accepts different FCGs may ease the pressure of totalizing communities to change the character of the state, as they will be less pressured to assimilate, and perhaps more interested in keeping a modus vivendi with the liberal state (Tamir 1998).Achievement of this goal entails walking a very fine line and establishing a delicate balance between the right of all groups -including fundamentalist and totalizing groups -to cultural continuance, and the fact that such rights are only available in liberal-democratic societies (Walzer 2005).In other words, since liberal-democratic societies are no less entitled than non-liberal groups to preserve and reproduce themselves, they should be permitted to avoid self-destruction committed in the name of their own essential values.This dilemma echoes Emanuel Levinas's ethics of the 'other'.In his book Humanisme de l'autre Homme (1972), Levinas rejects any preference of one culture over another.At the same time, however, he considers multiplicity without universalism as ad absurdum of indifference, abandoning the other to her fate.The vulnerability of the face of the other, says Levinas, exposes the responsibility of the self towards an unfamiliar other, guiding both to search for orientation which is lacking in cultural relativism (Chalier 1999).The Citizenhood concept adheres to Levinas' view of responsibility for the other, as represented in multiplicity combined with universalism.

The issue of historic national minorities
Historic national minorities usually do not feel connected to the nation state.In a 2003 survey by the UK Home Office (cited in Kymlicka 2011), only several percent of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland identified themselves as belonging to Britain, in contrast to some 86% of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi immigrants and white British.Similarly, in Israel, the historic national Palestinian minority considers itself excluded by the state's official definition as a national Jewish state (Agbaria, Mustafa and Jabareen 2015) and therefore does not feel Israeli.These emotions stem from these minorities' past sovereignty in the territories that are now ruled by the state.Their national sentiments notwithstanding, these minorities deserve collective and individual rights, as well as the right to equal citizenship, and to the individual choice of whether to embrace a sense of belonging to the state.The majority in a nation state, however, may intentionally exclude these minorities, not only from belonging but also from equal citizenship, fearing minorities' aspirations for independence (Kymlicka 2011).Thus, even when these minorities are granted equal citizenship and citizen rights, they are generally excluded from the 'we-ness' that the majority shares, and therefore they never feel at home.Exclusionary practices increase the minorities' resentment toward the majority and the nation state, which they see as an illegitimate force that deprives them of their cultural and national independence and identity.In a vicious circle this resentment strengthens the exclusionary practices and so on and so forth.Multiculturalism theories have tried to temper this tension by suggesting different versions of collective rights with or without territorial or non-territorial autonomy (Kymlicka 2011;Malloy, Osipov & Vizi 2016).While all these suggestions attempt at improving minorities relations with the majority, making their life less marginal, they do not bring a realistic option of integrating them into the comprehensive entity of the state.The Citizenhood concept, on the other hand, by suggesting an overarching top level to a multilevel identity, allows all the existing identities in the country to become one whole without negating the preservation of their independent identity.This practice leads to mutual responsibilities of the state and the historic national minorities, and suggests an answer to what Kymlicka (2017) defines as the question of 'what states can rightfully demand of minorities' (p.2).When the state offers minorities coexistence of their separate and shared identity, it can more rightfully ask them to see themselves as full members in the multicultural state.

Discussion and Conclusion
Multicultural theory has not yet solved the problem of otherness and the denial of belonging from minorities.Even where the nation state grants members of minorities full and equal civil and cultural rights, such rights are often granted reluctantly and are not accompanied by genuine emotional and social acceptance by the majority.This situation usually emerges also within 'cultural liberalism' -where the state does not impose its nationality on those who do not share it, grants certain group-specific rights or policies (as long as they operate within certain constraints of liberal justice), and at the same time allows individuals from these groups to freely express and cherish their own national identity (Kymlicka 1998).
Emotionally based excluding practices keep marginalizing minorities, pushing them to a status of 'tolerated guests', excluded from a sense of belonging and the safety of being 'at home'.
The Citizenhood concept addresses this problem, by transcending the notion of 'respecting the other' to casting off minorities' otherness, while enabling them to remain who they are.According to the Citizenhood concept, both the majority and the minority FCGs share a super ordinate layer of characteristics and general rules, that creates a shared top layer of identity.On the one hand, Citizenhood calls for pluralism that acknowledges the right of all groups to conduct their lives according to their particular culture, tradition, habits and norms.On the other hand, it tries to prevent the state from being a collection of isolated communities, and supports Walzer's (1990) idea that pluralism without universalism is devoid of meaning, and ruins the possibility of critically analyzing non-pluralistic attitudes such as radical nationalism and sexism (Sarid 2009).
Citizenhood is not a simple solution.It requires sophisticated and detailed political decentralization arrangements based on an agreed constitution (Mautner 2011), while preserving both the rights of minorities and those of the majority.This may seem utopian.Nonetheless, inevitable difficulties notwithstanding, reconciling conflicting fundamental identities under an overarching identity is possible, as evinced, for example, by efforts in Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups, especially among members of bereaved families.With personal trauma as their common denominator, groups such as The Parents' Circle4 and Combatants for Peace5 have assumed an overarching shared identity as grieving victims of the Palestinian-Israel conflict, in addition to rather than instead of their rivaling national identifies.They have demonstrated how, by assuming this top layer of shared identity, they are able to work together to prevent both nations from suffering the consequences of the conflict in the future (Keynan 2009).
The work of groups such as these is a source of hope.If reconciliation is possible among individuals who have lost their loved ones to the conflict, it should be possible for sub-groups of citizens in democratic countries to harmonize their relations under a shared overarching identity.Such an endeavor certainly requires serious, honest and courageous efforts by the leaders of all the country's sub-groups.Unfortunately, the likelihood that political leaderships would lead such an effort is quite low, as in situations of conflict, it is the more aggressive leaders that come to the fore and attain power (Fisher 2006).Political leaders typically prefer to exacerbate intergroup conflicts as a mechanism to strengthen their leadership (Pittinsky and Simon 2007;Keynan 2009).Civil society leadership on the other hand is less limited by political considerations, debts and interests and therefore may be a more promising candidate to lead such a project.
The concept of Citizenhood builds on the the fact that individuals and groups have 'as many identities as [they have] relations with other individuals, groups, or social sites' and that they 'shift from identity to identity as they shift relations' (Tilly 2015, p. 9), and uses it as a leverage to alleviate inner conflicts between citizens who wish to remain loyal to their distinct cultural and natural groups and yet become part of the larger group's identity and aspirations.Having an overarching identity to which all belong, strengthens the state's social contract between all citizens as equal members in this alliance of individuals and communities in their shared home, the state, thereby also encouraging cooperation between the different segments of society to promote joint interests.
The majority may feel threatened by this concept, fearing it might limit their own wish to realize their nationhood in their national state.One should remember, however, that researchers of multiculturalism have continuously claimed that the majority's cultural dominance is happening unaffectedly, by the natural course of the majority's choices (Kymlicka 1995;Kymlicka 2003;Tamir 1998).Just like any community, as long as the majority members imagine their cultural/national community (Anderson 1983) as the one they wish to belong to (Renan 1996), they will be able to attain their dominance simply because of their number.Citizenhood does not prevent the majority from preserving its national feelings, nor the state's representation of its symbols, though it does require room to present additional cultural symbols in the public sphere.Perhaps the best way to describe Citizenhood from the majority's standpoint is that instead of undermining other groups' national and cultural identities and emotions, it regulates the relationship between all groups, allowing a combination of symbols.This concept echoes Kymlicka's suggestion (2011) of multination federalism, but offers instead a multi-identity federalism, whose borders are not territorial.Instead of federal managerial arrangements it contains 'federal' identity, which similar to territorial federalism enables each group to preserve its identity, uniqueness and cultural life while conforming with the democratic values of the state.The members of each cultural group may live wherever they choose, identify themselves as belonging to this or other community according to their own choice, and change their identity if they so choose.This may calm down the struggle over dominating the state's center and public sphere, and allow a sense of solidarity that extends the boundaries of each group.Promoting an inclusive national identity may even strengthen the pride of all groups in their state, as a moral society, a necessary condition for continuous effort for national improvement (Rorty 1998).
To embrace all those who wish to belong to an inclusive citizenship, a nation state must satisfy three conditions: prohibition of the exclusion of minority groups from the legitimate civil partnership in the 'we-ness' of the majority, prohibition of oppression of individuals by their own totalizing groups, and defense of liberal-democratic values.The Citizenhood notion is capable of satisfying all three conditions, provided that the defining rules apply equally to all members of the polity.These rules prohibit the exclusion of minorities by eliminating all barriers to full integration for individuals who so choose (without forced assimilation); grant collective rights to minority groups, eliminating obstacles to cultural and educational activities; and facilitate a superordinate civil identity by creating an atmosphere of inclusive citizenship.At the same time, however, these rules also prohibit non-liberal minorities from imposing oppressive practices on their own members, and limit the extent of these groups' political power to change laws that reflect fundamental liberal-democratic laws.
While supporting Taylor's (1997b) concept of 'deep diversity', Citizenhood addresses also the other side of Kymlicka's (2017) question, cited above, of 'what states can rightfully demand from minorities'.In other words, the Citizenhood concept considers all individuals and groups of citizens as both equal and as part of the overall identity of the state, while asserting that this status allows both sides to demand reasonable reciprocity in their relations.
Table 1 provides a concise summary comparison between Citizenhood, citizenship and some of the more important above-mentioned theories and suggestions that have been forwarded to resolve the conflicts that arise due to multiculturalism.The theories that the table addresses are listed on the first row of the table, and the issues that are needed to be solved are listed in the first column.Each cell provides an assessment of whether or not, and to what extent, the theory in the corresponding column resolves the issue in the corresponding row.For lack of space each theory is identified in this table by just one author, even though several might have shared the idea; I usually named the earliest author to come up with the idea.
With seven theories and 16 issues there are quite a few comparisons to be made.In principle however, one observes from Table 1 that Citizenhood is better suited to resolve the problems concomitant with multiculturalism than the other theories.It provides a concrete named concept which projects a sense of belonging, whereas the other concepts might be somewhat nebulous.Citizenhood is the only concept that unites all minority groups under one overarching identity with which they could identify, except for groups of totalizing minorities (for which nobody has a solution).But the paper provides suggestions of how Citizenhood could even somewhat alleviate tensions between these groups and the majority.All theories assume that there are some groups that are less attached to the state and that the state must be tolerant towards them in some way.Citizenhood on the other hand posits that all groups belong to the state, but each in its own manner.
All the suggested theories are not yet feasible and are subject to opposition by the majority groups in the states and by the politicians.The majority might be suspicious concerning how the proposed arrangements would affect their power to dominate the public sphere.Politicians, as mentioned above, are not entirely opposed to majority-minority conflicts since such conflicts could become a useful tool to enhance their leadership in a time of contesting political power struggles.These politicians would not welcome measures that would limit the conflicts.Citizenhood however outlines a way whereby its adoption could become a win-win move for both the majority and the minority groups.Hopefully these groups would have enough influence on politicians to induce them to embrace this concept.