Citizenship and Citizens´ Human Rights: The Perspective of Social Empowerment

Abstract

The true meaning of citizenship is a complex affair and depends on the several acceptances that the media and the academy give to the term. Systematization may be an attempt to see the correct amplitude and meaning of its value for the understanding of the spectrum of political, civil, individual and social rights. This is due to the different acceptances originating from paradigmatic changes in Law that acknowledges citizenship as a process of self-identification of individuals between themselves and the State. The deduction method and bibliographic and legislative research show the manner alterity may be used as a guideline of citizenship and the materialization of citizen human rights. In fact, intersubjective relationships between administrated people and their peers and the Administration are more evident in the urban space. Results show that social empowerment and the acquisition of social capital are the most efficient forms to elaborate a general theory of citizen human rights that would release citizenship from the legal level and place it on the factual plane.