Property and Social Citizenship: Social Policy beyond the North

Abstract

This article examines how the property rights in land have come to be a constitutive element of social citizenship. Reviewing the theoretical developments on the idea of social citizenship since Marshall’s seminal essay on Citizenship and Social Class (1950), this introductory article identifies four processes which bring property rights to the centre stage of social rights. First, recognition of entitlement beyond ownership opens up different social functions of property. Social citizenship as a tool is able to demand contextually appropriate rights from the bundle of rights that property is constituted of. Second, the idea of social citizenship is global today, and has transcended nation-state boundaries. How trade and communications impact property in land shapes the realisation of social rights. Three, active citizens contribute to the creation of public spaces in emerging urban residential areas. Citizens make social claims on such spaces through radical forms of insurgent citizenship. Four, planning as a tool, which organises property for the realisation of citizens’ social rights, is able to meet the competing objectives of human rights and speculative profiteering by real estate owners. These four aspects become essential to understand how social citizenship is unfolding, particularly in the Global South.