Citizenship study of the past several decades has revealed citizenship as a multi-layered, multiply-scaled, and often exclusionary concept. Despite increasing and multi-disciplinary scholarly interest in the multi-faceted nature of citizenship as a political, social, and identity-oriented construct, it remains true that the majority of citizenship theory has developed in relation to adults, rendering children all but invisible to much citizenship discourse. Traditional citizenship theory has tended to position children as future adults and therefore as future citizens of the nation-state who prepare for citizenship through participation in public schools. Recent scholarship has also advocated children’s rights education as a key priority to help empower children as citizens in the present-day. This project investigates how citizenship in Ontario elementary schools, through curricular learning as well as non-curricular activities. I use multi-method research comprised of discursive analysis of provincial documents, semi-structured interviews with elementary school teachers in three school boards, and interactive activity sessions with elementary school students. These findings consider how provincially-scaled discourses persist through curriculum and policy which situate children as future adults and as responsible, competitive citizens in the present day. Teachers value such responsible citizenship as they negotiate the demands of delivering curriculum and maintaining functional classrooms, but concurrently contribute to local citizenship education through community knowledge and empowering student interaction. Children’s contributions reveal a willingness to associate citizenship with ‘good’ citizenship, law-abiding behaviour, and thus situate the school as a site where citizenship expectations are delineated. While these findings reveal the significant mediating role of local school teachers in delivering citizenship education as a supplement to standardized curriculum, only limited connections between citizenship and rights, and often between citizenship and the nation-state, are present overall. Children do figure as present-day citizens through their ability to perform responsible actions at any age, but this remains at best only tenuously connected to a citizenship of both rights and responsibilities.

Governments, human rights bodies and disability studies scholars all have suggested that disabled people’s citizenship – the legal status and lived practices that enable membership, participation and belonging in one’s community - depends on consistent, adequate and readily available home and personal supports. Yet, little theoretical or empirical work examines disabled young people’s citizenship or their use of support, particularly from their standpoints. Consequently, the ‘work’ disabled young people do to accomplish citizenship remains unrecognized, as are their unique requirements for support to do that work. Normative non-disabled citizenship assumptions remain unproblematized. This study explores what disabled young people do to accomplish citizenship, using home and personal support as the empirical foci. I used a dialogic theoretical and methodological approach, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin and Dorothy Smith. Both posit that our talk, consciousness and actions respond to and anticipate the voices of others. Through participatory media arts techniques with disabled young people, ethnographic observation and interviews with gatekeepers to formal and informal care, I describe the work that a group of disabled young people did to secure and maintain support and how this in turn shaped their opportunities for specific citizenship practices: self-determination, community participation and social contribution. I argue that disabled young people's work to secure and maintain support requires that they mobilize the authoritative discourse of 'the poster child': a set of objectified values and views encapsulated in utterances about disabled people as futureless, deficient and deferential, originating in images to promote charitable giving. I trace three sequences of activities in which participants assimilated, resisted or brought poster child utterances into ‘dialogue’. The findings raise questions about the extent to which formal entitlements to supports influence how citizenship is lived. Drawing attention to the gaps and tensions in support provision, the findings illuminate the tremendous invisible, tacit work these participants do to strengthen fragile supports. This work, organized by philanthropic rather than rights discourses, leads to a qualified or fragile citizenship. Finally, the study raises questions about the normative and material demands that we may all experience with respect to achieving citizenship, regardless of disability or age.

This study examines the perceptions of citizenship of youth involved in a community civic engagement program. The UP-BEAT Youth Health Leadership program trained youth participants in public speaking, technology, youth mapping, leadership and government. The study gathered qualitative and quantitative information from the 18 youth participants. Data gathered examined youth perceptions of the characteristics of good citizens as well as how the program influenced youth understandings of justice. Overall, youth in the program demonstrated a desire to facilitate community change through action, expressing ideas and engaging others. Minority participants demonstrated huge commitment to the program, engagement and social capital within their communities and a desire to participate in civic activities. Youth perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of citizenship were not highly influenced by justice. However, youth were able to recognize issues of injustice based on the new environments and new experiences they were exposed to during the program. Youth also found adultism which existed within the program and the environments youth interacted with a deterrent for civic participation.

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Thesis--Nancy. / Bibliography: p. [7]-8.

Inaug.-Diss.--Heidelberg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. xi-xxxiv.

Thesis--Utrecht. / Vita. Foreword and summary in Dutch. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-193).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Psy.D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in School Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-127).