What are the main features of Marshall's theory of citizenship?

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What are the main features of Marshall’s theory of citizenship?

        T. H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship is the most recent theoretical model developed in the 1950s.  He elaborated his ideas around the three rights elements, civil, political and social rights.  He argued for equality of status rather than that due to the labour market. Along with all theories Marshall did not go without criticism, I will conclude with some of these criticisms and focus on the contemporary problems of citizenship.  

        Prior to explaining Marshall’s definition of citizenship, more general explanations can be offered. Citizenship refers to the position of being a citizen, and the collection of rights and duties of this position. These rights define the socio-political membership with the consequence of allocation of collective benefits to the social groups, households and individuals. Citizenship therefore comprises the individuals as fully- fledged members of a socio- political community, whether it is an inhabitant of a city or as a native. This provides the individual with access to limited resources, supplying social or legal protection from unexpected uncertainties of the market place and related life-cycle disadvantages.  Within the modern society citizenship creates new types of social solidarity in term of public relations of the exchanging of possessions with others for mutual benefit; this establishes new intergenerational bonds of loyalty and obligation outside the family. Hence citizenship reflects the values of a society, and a prospective model of living, which represents higher aspirations. 

        Marshall’s theory is that of a liberal- pluralist perspective, seeing the development of the concept of citizenship as the history of formal equalisation of the mainstream of society. Lister (1998) suggested that Marshall’s account of citizenship is one with a ‘happy ending’. He stated that increased formal equality would reduce the misery of capitalism’s ‘free market’. Citizenship would subside the conflict caused by the class struggle and progress towards ‘enlightened’ times. Marshall took the nation-state as certain in his analysis. Ireland and Scotland is strangely absent in his England centred account, and he saw the progress of citizenship over class conflicts as a process with its own internal dynamic.

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        Marshall identified three theoretically and historically distinct elements in what he based as citizenship due to three sets of socio-economic factors. Marshall argued there was a decrease in income inequality between the occupations; that there has been the ‘great extension’ of common culture and social solidarity rooted in the increasing common experience between individual and society as a whole. Finally the search for equality would ‘enrich the universal status of citizenship’. This enrichment would be the gaining of ‘rights’ by the individuals.  

The first right is civil citizenship. This includes the fundamental liberal rights such as the right to ...

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