The Margins of Citizenship

Citizenship is a central concept in political philosophy, bridging theory and practice and marking out those who belong and who members of the polity owe special attention. The injustices suffered by immigrants, disabled people, the economically inactive and others have been extensively catalogued, but their disadvantages have generally been conceptualised in social and/or economic terms, less commonly in terms of their status as members of the polity and hardly ever together, as a group. This volume seeks to investigate the partial citizenship which these groups share and in doing so to reflect upon civic marginalisation as a distinct kind of normative wrong. For example it is not often considered that children, though their lack of civic and political rights are marginal citizens and thus has something in common with the groups above. Each of the book's chapters explores some theoretical or practical aspect of marginal citizenship, and the volume as a whole engages with pressing debates in law and political theory, such as the limits of democratic inclusion and the character of social justice, as well as political questions such as the integration of migrants, the enfranchisement of prisoners and the labour rights of children.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy.