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Poor Citizen Essay, Research Paper

INTRODUCTIONIs ?poor citizen? a contradiction

in term? Can we truly speak of a person as ?complete? citizen if he strives day

and night for his survival in poverty? Can such a person exercise the rights

granted to him by the virtue of his membership to the community? Does not the

term poverty suggest the failure of social citizenship rights? This concise

essay will attempt to briefly answer these questions.In order to be able to

sufficiently answer these questions, we need to briefly examine citizenship

rights and look at what is that rights give to the person in whom they are

vested and determine how poverty effects the citizenship rights of an individual. Understanding Social Citizenship Rights. To the Greek philosopher

Aristotle citizenship was the privileged status for all free men of the

city-state. Women and children were not considered citizens and were therefore

excluded. Marshall (1950) sees citizenship as a status bestowed upon the full

members of a community. Marshall argues that there are no fixed inherent rights

in the concept of citizenship, however with historic development rights have

come to be associated with citizenship. Marshall identifies three types of

rights that he argues to be associated with citizenship in modern democracies.

He calls them civil rights, social rights and political rights.? To T.H. Marshall civil rights are rights of

citizenship necessary for personal freedom and liberty and include ?liberty of

the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property and

to conclude valid contracts, and the right to justice? (p. 10). In the economic

sphere, Marshall considered it a basic civil right to be able to follow the

occupation of one?s choice at the place of one?s choice, subject only to

legitimate restrictions. Citizenship in the modern democracy is based on

universal suffrage and equality before the law (Barbalet 1988).Socio-economic rights have

also been reflected in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, as fundamental human

rights. These rights are also further elaborated in the UN?s International

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These rights include rights

to social security in the event of unemployment,? sickness, disability or widowhood or old age, rights to food,

housing and clothing, rights to medical care and rights to various sorts of

education (Jones 1994). These rights also include inter alia the right to work, to just and favourable conditions of

employment, to protection against unemployment, to fair remuneration for the

work done, and to rest and leisure. Furthermore, everyone is also said to have

the right to ?freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy

the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits?.[1]There is a debate in academia as

to whether socio-economic rights are fundamental human rights or just

citizenship rights granted to the members of a nation-state. Maurice Cranston (1973)

argues that for a right to be basic and fundamental human right it must satisfy

three conditions of ?practicality?, ?universality? and ?paramount importance?.

Cranston argues that socio-economic rights fail the test of ?practicability?

i.e. it is not practical for governments of the developing countries to provide

all for their inhabitants with goods such as ?a standard of living adequate for

their health and well being?. Cranston argues that for a right to be

fundamental it must be genuinely universal in two ways: it should be a right

for all, and right against all. This, Cranston argues, is not true for

socio-economic rights as a right to periodic holidays is a rights claimed only

by the employees. In the same way socio-economic rights are not against all, as

the right to freedom of expression, rather they are rights against a government

or an employer. Socio-economic rights pass the test of ?paramount importance?,

but because of their failure to be practical and universal they are not

fundamental human rights, but citizenship rights. Donnelly (1985) has

criticised Cranston with being too simplistic. He argues that to say that right

to social security is not universal because not everyone will need to resort to

the welfare facility providing social security, is to say that the right to

fair trial is not a universal right because not everyone will need it. Welfare goods are considered

to be closely associated with social rights as it is through the consumption of

welfare goods that a citizen is able to realise the rights granted to him as a

citizen and attain well being. There are three reasons for considering welfare

goods essential for well being. One, they are regarded necessary for the

quality of life people spend. The second reason concerns the obligation of the

society to cater to the needs of its members. Thirdly, considering welfare

goods as rights tends to reduce the stigma attached with the benefits given to

the people by the government (Jones 1994).UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF RIGHTS Needs as RightsIt has been argued that people

have rights because they have needs. This line of argument is not without

problems. First of all what are needs and how can they be defined. What is the

difference between needs and wants? Needs have been argued to have an objective

quality that wants do not have. Wants are inherently subjective and various.

The needs

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