Global citizenship
Global citizenship is a form of transnationality, specifically the idea that one's identity transcends geography or political borders and that responsibilities or rights are derived from membership in a broader global class of "humanity". This does not mean that such a person denounces or waives their nationality or other, more local identities, but that such identities are given "second place" to their membership in a global community. Extended, the idea leads to questions about the state of global society in the age of globalization.
In general usage, the term may have much the same meaning as "world citizen" or cosmopolitan, but it also has additional, specialized meanings in differing contexts. Various organizations, such as the World Service Authority, have advocated global transnational citizenship.
The field of global citizenship, as a form of transnationality is transnationalism.
Usage
Education
In education, the term is most often used to describe a worldview or a set of values toward which education is oriented. The term "global society" is sometimes used to indicate a global studies set of learning objectives for students to prepare them for global citizenship.Global citizenship education
Within the educational system, the concept of global citizenship education is beginning to supersede or overarch movements such as multicultural education, peace education, human rights education, Education for Sustainable Development, and international education. Additionally, GCED rapidly incorporates references to the aforementioned movements. The concept of global citizenship has been linked with awards offered for helping humanity. Teachers are being given the responsibility of being social change agents. Audrey Osler, director of the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Education, the University of Leeds, affirms that "Education for living together in an interdependent world is not an optional extra, but an essential foundation".With GCED gaining attention, scholars are investigating the field and developing perspectives. The following are a few of the more common perspectives:
- Critical and transformative perspective. Citizenship is defined by being a member with rights and responsibilities. Therefore, GCED must encourage active involvement. GCED can be taught from a critical and transformative perspective, whereby students are thinking, feeling, and doing. In this approach, GCED requires students to be politically critical and personally transformative. Teachers provide social issues in a neutral and grade-appropriate way for students to understand, grapple with, and do something about.
- Worldmindedness. Graham Pike and David Selby view GCED as having two strands. Worldmindedness, the first strand, refers to understanding the world as one unified system and a responsibility to view the interests of individual nations with the overall needs of the planet in mind. The second strand, Child-centeredness, is a pedagogical approach that encourages students to explore and discover on their own and addresses each learner as an individual with inimitable beliefs, experiences, and talents.
- Holistic Understanding. The Holistic Understanding perspective was founded by Merry Merryfield, focusing on understanding the self in relation to a global community. This perspective follows a curriculum that attends to human values and beliefs, global systems, issues, history, cross-cultural understandings, and the development of analytical and evaluative skills.
Philosophy
Psychological studies
Global pollsters and psychologists have studied individual differences in the sense of global citizenship. Beginning in 2005, the World Values Survey, administered across almost 100 countries, included the statement, "I see myself as a world citizen". In the WVS Wave 6, conducted from 2010 to 2014, across the globe 29.5% "strongly agreed" and another 41% "agreed" with this statement. However, there were wide national variations, as 71% of citizens of Qatar, 21% of U.S. citizens, 16% of Chinese, and just 11% of Palestinians "strongly agreed". Interpreting these differences is difficult, however, as survey methods varied for different countries, and the connotations of "world citizen" differ in different languages and cultures.For smaller studies, several multi-item scales have been developed, including Sam McFarland and colleagues' Identification with All Humanity scale, Anna Malsch and Alan Omoto's Psychological Sense of Global Community, Gerhard Reese and colleagues' Global Social Identity scale, and Stephen Reysen and Katzarska-Miller's global citizenship identification scale. These measures are strongly related to one another, but they are not fully identical.
Studies of the psychological roots of global citizenship have found that persons high in global citizenship are also high on the personality traits of openness to experience and agreeableness from the Big Five personality traits and high in empathy and caring. Oppositely, the authoritarian personality, the social dominance orientation, and psychopathy are all associated with less global human identification. Some of these traits are influenced by heredity as well as by early experiences, which, in turn, likely influence individuals' receptiveness to global human identification.
Research has found that those who are high in global human identification are less prejudiced toward many groups, care more about international human rights, worldwide inequality, global poverty and human suffering. They attend more actively to global concerns, value the lives of all human beings more equally, and give more in time and money to international humanitarian causes. They tend to be more politically liberal on both domestic and international issues. They want their countries to do more to alleviate global suffering.
Following a social identity approach, Reysen and Katzarska-Miller tested a model showing the antecedents and outcomes of global citizenship identification. Individuals' normative environment and global awareness predict global citizenship identification. Global citizenship identification then predicts six broad categories of prosocial behaviors and values, including: intergroup empathy, valuing diversity, social justice, environmental sustainability, intergroup helping, and a felt responsibility to act. Subsequent research has examined variables that influence the model such as: participation in a college course with global components, perception of one's global knowledge, college professors' attitudes toward global citizenship, belief in an intentional worlds view of culture, participation in a fan group that promotes the identity, use of global citizen related words when describing one's values, possible self as a global citizen, religiosity and religious orientation, threat to one's nation, interdependent self-construal prime, perception of the university environment, and social media usage.
In 2019, a review of all studies of the psychology of global human identification and citizenship through 2018 was published.
Aspects
Geography, sovereignty, and citizenship
At the same time that globalization is reducing the importance of nation-states, the idea of global citizenship may require a redefinition of ties between civic engagement and geography. Face-to-face town hall meetings seem increasingly supplanted by electronic "town halls" not limited by space and time. Absentee ballots opened the way for expatriates to vote while living in another country; the Internet may carry this several steps further. Another interpretation given by several scholars of the changing configurations of citizenship due to globalization is the possibility that citizenship becomes a changed institution; even if situated within territorial boundaries that are national, if the meaning of the national itself has changed, then the meaning of being a citizen of that nation changes.Human rights
The lack of a universally recognized world body can put the initiative upon global citizens themselves to create rights and obligations. Rights and obligations as they arose at the formation of nation-states are being expanded. Thus, new concepts that accord certain "human rights" which arose in the 20th century are increasingly being universalized across nations and governments. This is the result of many factors, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948, the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust and growing sentiments towards legitimizing marginalized peoples. Couple this with growing awareness of our impact on the environment, and there is the rising feeling that citizen rights may extend to include the right to dignity and self-determination. If national citizenship does not foster these new rights, then global citizenship may seem more accessible.Global citizenship advocates may confer specific rights and obligations of human beings trapped in conflicts, those incarcerated as part of ethnic cleansing, and pre-industrialized tribes newly discovered by scientists living in the depths of dense jungle