A citizen is not just a noun — it is a performance — a negotiation, a contract signed in ink but lived in action. We prefer to perceive citizenship as a birthright or a legal status, an entry in a government ledger that declares our belonging. But what if citizenship is not just something we possess, but something we do? What if it is less about paperwork and more about participation; less about where we are, and more about how we exist within power structures? The term citizen traces its origins to the Latin civis, meaning a member of a city or state, one who has certain privileges and duties. For Aristotle, a citizen is not just someone who resides in a state but someone who actively shapes it, contributing to the polis. Hobbes thought the state was our Leviathan, protecting us in exchange for submission. Rousseau envisioned the contrat social, a collective agreement where the individual surrenders some freedoms for the greater good. Which one is right? Perhaps all. Perhaps none.

For centuries, citizenship was a privilege — a tight-knit club for land-owning men — the architects of the polis. Everyone else? The invisible scaffolding holding up the grand democratic experiment. But modern democracies claim to have moved beyond exclusivity. Today, citizenship is enshrined in constitutions, bound to rights and responsibilities. Yet, ask the stateless refugee, the disenfranchised voter, the person whose documents are lost to bureaucracy — what does citizenship mean to them? A formality denied or a life unrecognised. And what about the passive citizen? The one who possesses the title but refuses the role? Citizenship is not a streaming service subscription — you don’t get to just opt out. If democracy is a social contract, are we bound to its terms even if we never signed up? If we disengage, are we still citizens, or are we just tenants of a nation-state, present but uninvolved, legal but not political? Then comes the digital age, where national borders blur and citizenship is no longer tied to soil, but to servers. Are we citizens of our countries or of the algorithms that dictate our discourse? A tweet can spark revolutions; an Instagram post can topple regimes. Do we owe allegiance to a flag, or to the collective consciousness of the internet? And if activism is just a hashtag away, is citizenship a responsibility, or an aesthetic?

In the end, citizenship is neither fixed nor free. It is an action, a commitment, a continual act of belonging. It is more than just a name on a ledger or a stamp on a passport — it is the push and pull of power, the tug-of-war between individual agency and collective governance. The real question isn’t who is a citizen, but who chooses to be one? And more importantly — who gets to decide?

About the Author

Ketaki Thakur, an independent researcher with degrees from SOAS, University of London and Ambedkar University, primarily explores Governance through a Postcolonial, Gendered lens. Their work interrogates Surveillance, Agency, and Resistance, focusing on how socially marginalised bodies navigate hyper-visibility, erasure, and control across spaces.

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