Citizenship from Bottom-Up: Developing a Citizenship Concourse

Citizenship is a dynamic and contested concept. While we know of many empirical analyses that measure attitudes towards individual components of citizenship (like national identity, naturalization etc.), we are missing analyses to understand how these aspects relate to each other. A more holistic empirical approach could improve our understanding of what citizens expect from each other, how they relate obligation with citizenship, and how they think about national citizenship in the context of an increasingly interconnected world. This paper uses results from a holistic empirical analysis on citizenship. This analysis identifies conceptualizations on citizenship amongst German citizens using a Q-methodological survey. The paper present first results on the emerging discourses on citizenship. It then analyzes how these discourses relate to views on political interest, activity and identification. Conclusions will be presented on how political identification and awareness are viewed within the framework of citizenship.