AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

6 The Utility of the Citizen: Relating Citizenship in Social Movement Activity 65
egalitarian, horizontal and solidarian structures seeking to disable or
question unequal power relations. Therefore, citizenship is a crucial concept
and tool for them to claim and realize equality or rights against such
power relations.
While there are inevitably impositions to concepts dictated by overarching
social and structural power relations, the potential of citizenship
remains as a useful tool for actors such as social movements who seek to
mobilize on the basis of common concerns, mutual interests, identification
and grievances. Social movements often seek to reveal issues not
necessarily considered problematic within mainstream politics or media,
attempting to shine light on frequently ignored spheres of influence and
conflict. This can also be referred to as a political strategy whereby the
concept of citizenship is a tool contesting the right of a collective and
the individual held within it to possess rights and express them. As argued
by Dagnino, social movements actually inject new forms of citizenship
on the basis of their grievances, redefining the very idea of rights.
These rights may not even be linked to dominant classes or the state for
their incorporation and transcend the liberal perception for inclusion,
membership and belonging to a given political system. Rather, a movement’s
imagination of citizenship is the right to participate in the very
definition of a system, economic, political, legal or otherwise, and to define
what type of structure they wish to be members of (Dagnino 1998:
51). Therefore, citizenship is a multidisciplinary concept related to socioeconomic,
political, legal and cultural arenas serving as a tool upon which
social movements can engage public and private action around a potentially
new kind of inclusion (Hickey and Mohan 2004: 70). Not all social
movements may envision such a radical reorganization of politics and
society; however, the sustainability of social movements themselves still
depends quite distinctly on citizenship not merely as a concept, but also
as a tool for their mobilization and action-oriented activities.
POLITICAL ARENAS
Citizenship is now recognized not only in relation to its legal and political
considerations, but encompasses a pluralist understanding, acknowledging
ideas of inclusivity, participation, culture, etc. Social movements
are able to envision a new form of political engagement enshrined by
democratic principles that accounts for this diversity. With citizenship as
a reference point, social movements are able to operationalize democracy