It might seem a little presumptuous to place this talk on citizenship so early in the programme of this conference---before we have had a chance to thrash out what UBI is, how to sustain it, and how to bring it into being. But there is a point to this programming: UBI is and always has been about citizenship at a very fundamental level.

I begin with the poetic, almost mantra-like, definition of Basic Income (BI) promoted a few years ago by the Basic Income Research Group in England (e.g., BIRG Bulletin 14:2 [1992]):

It is also instructive to note that about the same time as this definition was being proffered, BIRG was renamed the Citizen's Income Study Centre and began to emphasise citizenship issues more in the pages of its publications. While it is possible to place undue importance on labels, I don't think this particular name change was insignificant. It coincided with a new found interest in the policy implications and conceptual subtleties of citizenship arising from proposals for a Citizens' Charter in Britain, the revival of political democracy in pockets of Eastern Europe, and the growing moves of the European Union to a common sphere of citizenship.

And yet, there has always been a degree of uncertainty or ambivalence in the ideas of citizenship floating around BI/CI circles. Not long ago, Philippe Van Parijs, one of the most able thinkers and eloquent spokespeople in those circles, defined BI as "an income unconditionally paid to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement" (1992:3). What, or rather who, is he referring to as "all"? I think the open-ended nature of his definition reflects not only the inclusiveness embodied in BI but also some of its ambiguity.

An important recent essay by David Purdy (1994) investigated the merits of Citizen's Income which he maintained is analytically distinct from and logically prior to BI. I will come to his reason in a moment.

He begins, as many others have done (e.g., Jordan 1987, 1989), by highlighting the stark choice between two ways forward for welfare, ways which embody two completely contrasting visions of the future.

On one hand, there is the neo-liberal vision (in New Zealand terms, one automatically thinks of Rogernomics, Ruthanasia, and ACT doctrine), which stresses individual responsibility and economic competitiveness. Its goal is to cut back welfare spending (widely seen as unaffordable), to encourage and if necessary coerce all those who can to enter the labour market in conditions which maintain the competitiveness of the capitalist system, and to target social welfare assistance as narrowly as possible through means-testing, work-readiness criteria and time limits on state-provided assistance.

The only viable alternative vision, in Purdy's view, is one that marries the the liberal tradition of concern for personal liberty and the socialist tradition of concern for social justice (1994:33,37). At its heart is the idea of a Citizen's Income, which "differs from all existing social transfers, in that it is payable:

1. to individuals rather than families or households;
2. irrespective of income from other sources;
3. without requiring any past or present work performance, or any test of willingness to seek paid work or accept jobs if they are offered" (1994:33)
   

In Purdy's terms, CI is a direct form of social transfer, based on a categorical entitlement, which is universal and based on liberal-socialist justificatory principles (1994:33-37).

Only if it is then tied to some conception of subsistence (either 'partial' or 'full') should it be termed a Basic Income.

He devotes a full section of his paper to the procedures and ramifications of turning Citizen's Income into Basic Income---but those are tangential to my topic for the moment and will be addressed by other speakers. My point is that, while we do not have to place undue reliance on Purdy's distinction between CI and BI, it does clarify a number of issues which we can and probably must disentangle if we are to proceed with the task of implementing such a policy.

In some respects, the distinction between CI and BI corresponds to what might from another angle be seen as the two dimensions of breadth and depth of citizenship. Together, they make up the complex of policies, ideas and practice which we can for present purposes refer to as UBI. But they can be treated separately:

1. Who gets UBI and/or citizenship?
2. What does entitlement and/or citizenship mean and what does it do for those receive it?

Note that both 'who' and 'what' have normative connotations. Inevitably, we not only ask who is to get UBI and what that entails---but also who should receive it and what that should entail.

Note, too, that breadth and depth are not necessarily , and certainly have not always been historically, linked in a mutually reinforcing manner. Thus, citizenship has arguably been broadening in some ways under the neo-liberal regimes of Thatcherism, Reaganomics and Rogernomics, whereas the depth (the 'richness', 'thickness') of citizenship has been diminishing. Another way of saying this is that a very 'thin' veneer of citizenship may be applying to wider (or perhaps just newer) categories of citizen. Such a development is logically compatible with an ideology that stresses formal rights and individual responsibilities (see Bellamy and Greenaway 1995). Indeed, ideologues of the New Right probably feel that breadth and depth of citizenship are not only not necessarily linked but that they are or should be inversely related!

In my view, however, the current dissociation between them is just an outcome of certain historical forces and ultimately I think they should be linked in order to produce a genuine UBI.

Let me schematically list some of the issues which fall under the headings of 'breadth' and 'depth' before going on to discuss them in more detail.

The extension of legal and constitutional rights, the enactment of universal suffrage, the rise of the welfare state, the expansion of state-provided housing, education and healthcare---the whole history of these developments illustrates what I mean by the 'depth' of citizenship. I don't have time to deal with all of them here and some of them fall outside the brief of this conference and of UBI. But, increasingly, the adherents of UBI are coming to accept that this policy needs to be part of a package deal, a 'social wage' that covers all basic needs as well as economic subsistence.

My discussion of the 'depth of citizenship' will start, as so many have done before me, with the classic essay by British social theorist and policy-maker, T. H. Marshall, on Citizenship and Social Class (1950).

For Marshall, citizenship is a complex notion, involving civil, political and social elements, all of which together constitute full societal membership. He constructed a British historical narrative which showed the gradual increase in rights of citizenship over time. I present it here in schematic form:

This last, the social element, is clearly linked to the development of relatively open state-funded systems of education and to the development of institutions of the welfare state.

Marshall deserves credit for providing one of the first and most powerful statements of the complexity and richness that social citizenship entails. Nevertheless, his historical narrative has been criticised for being triumphalist, complacently evolutionist and ethnocentric, and for underplaying the importance of political struggle at every step of the way (e.g., Roche 1987; but cf. Watts 1995:21).

In any event, he needs to be understood in the context of his times: in the late 1940s, fascism appeared to have been vanquished once and for all, capitalists seemed to have largely accepted the need for a welfare state and for the nationalisation of large enterprises, the role of the state in ensuring equality and redistribution seemed like a fait accompli, the goal of 'full employment' not only looked desirable but achievable. Indeed, it has often been remarked that Marshall, like Lord Beveridge before him, took labour force participation to be an essential underpinning of full citizenship---and that his view of what it is to be a citizen is therefore skewed silently but massively in favour of the stereotype of an employed adult male subject.

The tenor of our times is quite different. While there are still those who argue for Full Employment (FE) as the only way to reverse the rise of neo-liberalism by fostering an adequate level of social participation (e.g., Pixley 1993; 1995), most proponents of UBI/CI generally see this as a fruitless quest.

It is important to clarify what I mean here, as FE notions are the source of much controversy in the ranks of UBI proponents as well as one of the major sources of criticisms from other progressive groups. Many unemployed people and their advocates (e.g., Sue Bradford and the working group on UBI at the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Association) argue that the abandonment of a commitment to FE (often by what are termed the new middle class of 'post-materialists' who have experienced the advantages and disadvantages of working in well-paid and prestigious occupations) conflicts with the goals of many long-term unemployed, who long for such positions of privilege and would love to have achieved the same degree of choice. The UBI movement needs to incorporate and listen to the latter voices. The resolution of these differences, in my view, stems from the fact that UBI would not only extend a greater degree of choice to everyone but would also allow us to radically rethink what employment and work might be. In short, it is only in a UBI system that 'full' and, more importantly, relatively autonomous employment becomes possible.

Under present and future socio-economic conditions, however, that kind of FE is a chimera. Let me just mention a few factors:

• the trend towards post-Fordist methods of manufacture;
• the increasing importance of service and information sectors;
• the explosion of casualised, non-unionised and part-time work;
• the creation of a dual economy;
• the constantly rising thresholds for entry into the full-time, well paid labour force.

It is for these sorts of reasons that theorists like Maurice Roche envisage the growing need for a kind of 'post-industrial citizenship' (1987:389-92).

On top of all of these changes in the world of work, the welfare state has been targeted for retrenchment by the New Right; privatisation of what were formerly publicly-owned resources is in full swing; and the market is touted as the only solution for our ills.

But the proponents of the Old Left and the New Right are wrong. We can probably kiss goodbye to the concept of Full Employment on which Marshall's and Pixley's notion of citizenship is predicated.

Moreover, promoting the goal of FE plays into the hands of employers---especially these days when the labour market is more competitive, employment is more exploitative and compelled than ever. Why increase the numbers locked into the core of the system? FE policies make people's worth seem to depend on their work, which is seen as valuable largely to the extent that it commands a large salary package. Some of full employment's proponents (e.g., Pixley) claim that a BI would depress overall wage rates but the same criticism actually applies just as much (if not more) to the quest for FE in conditions of job scarcity.

FE as an ideology is exclusionary. Because its chances of success are so remote, those who do not or cannot gain paid employment are seen as failures (at best) or bludgers. And large numbers of people have no intention or desire to work in the existing paid labour force because they have more important things to do---caring for children, sick family members or elderly parents, doing 'voluntary' work, or surfing (Van Parijs 1991).

UBI, rather than FE, is therefore the policy which not only recognises the massive changes in work that have occurred in post-industrial societies but which also has the potential to produce a genuinely productive form of full and voluntary employment, once it is introduced.

Let me now turn to the issues which I have listed under the heading of the 'breadth of citizenship'.

As Purdy notes, whatever the arguments in favour of CI, "it remains to be decided who qualifies as a citizen" (1994:38). In the case of a "single, well-established state", he claims there is no great difficulty in determining citizenship, provided that legal residence becomes the defining criterion rather than ancestry or ethnicity. "However", he adds, "in anything less than a unitary world state, any definition of citizenship is an act of closure: 'insiders' are included, 'outsiders' excluded" (1994:38).

As a way out, he simply notes (1) that states are artificial and historically contingent creations, whose borders and powers are continually revised; and (2) that "a justice-seeking state would operate an immigration policy which was neither discriminatory nor laissez-faire; would refrain from dominating or exploiting the citizens of other states; and would act in concert with the international community to overcome unjust structural inequalities in the global division of resources and the pattern of international trade" (1994:38).

Sketchy and inadequate as these remarks may be, they address concerns that simply were not seen as important thirty, forty, fifty years ago.

Marshall's conception of citizenship again serves as a useful example of a rather outdated view. Its extreme idealism quite unconsciously justifies cultural exclusiveness: citizenship, he argued, is "based on loyalty to a civilisation which is a common possession" (1950:56). Is this a viable conception in multicultural and bicultural societies or in conditions of permeable national boundaries? Its unstated premise is a very unitary and homogeneous notion of British culture, ethnicity and nationalism. I will return to this point.

For the moment, however, I want to look at New Zealand's sphere of citizenship, by which I mean the extended local region among which many of our people circulate and from which we recruit new citizens. This region of the world provides some interesting insights on the issue of citizenship and some test cases of potentially international significance for the extension of UBI as a transnational programme.

Note, then, (1) the (still reasonably unconditional) rights of New Zealanders and Australians to live and work in each other's countries, and (2) the unconditional rights of New Zealand citizenship possessed by people from the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, despite increasing signs of independence by some of their goverments. For the foreseeable future, however, these entities will remain part of what constitutional experts call the 'New Zealand realm'.

The degree of flexibility shown by these relationships is a good precedent, especially where it has led to greater inclusiveness. In many respects, New Zealand citizenship has become a mobile and ever-changing status and this country has arguably the least exclusive immigration policy in its history. The latest published set of official criteria put out by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA 1995) makes for interesting reading. It states (DIA 1995:3):

• born in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, or the Ross Dependency;
• legally adopted by a New Zealand citizen parent (if you were adopted overseas we need to check that their adoption laws are similar to ours);
• a British subject resident in New Zealand during all of 1948;
• granted New Zealand citizenship;
• and you are probably a New Zealand citizen if you were born overseas to a New Zealand citizen parent.

To become a New Zealand citizen entails meeting six general requirements (DIA 1995:4-5). These include:

1. legal entry to New Zealand for permanent residence;
2. some rather complicated rules concerning length of residence prior to application;
3. an intention to continue to live in New Zealand or to work for a New Zealand organisation overseas;
4. an ability to understand and speak English;
5. possession of good character;
6. knowing the responsibilities and privileges of New Zealand citizenship. This last criterion remains tantalisingly ill-defined....

On top of those requirements, you may qualify if "you are or have been married to a New Zealand citizen; and... have established and can maintain some association with New Zealand other than your marriage, even if you do not intend living here" (DIA 1995:5).

There are a couple of other situations in which someone might qualify:

1. being born before 1 January 1978 and having a mother who was a New Zealand citizen (otherwise than by descent) when you were born;
2. being a Western Samoan and able to prove that you were in New Zealand on 14 September 1982 or that you legally entered after that date and have been granted permanent resident status (DIA 1995:5).

This rather lengthy discussion of citizenship criteria may seem like a digression. I have given the matter some attention precisely because of its complexity and ad hoc nature. That reflects at least two things:

1. a fractured and contentious colonial history: Britain's colonisation of this country and our ambivalent attempts to cut the umbilical cord with the United Kingdom; New Zealand's late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonialist ventures in parts of Polynesia;
2. the political and economic turn towards Asia, encouragement of economic migrants from that region in particular, and the trend towards valuing economic criteria more highly in assessing citizenship applications (seeing New Zealand as part of a 'free global market' in migratory labour, capital and entrepreneurship).

These developments suggest that citizenship criteria will have to become more, not less, flexible. Indeed, just as the discussion of 'depth' in the previous section implied the need to envision a form of citizenship which is suited to 'post-industrial' conditions, we may have to envision forms which are 'post-national'. A very practical solution to be explored involves linking citizenship to the payment of taxes. By having one's primary registration as an (income-) taxpayer in a particular jurisdiction, one might become eligible for UBI. In fact, Keith Rankin's evolving proposal for UBI, in which a standard tax credit is central, seems to entail precisely such a notion.

A lot more is needed, in any event, for citizenship to become more just and more meaningful than it is at the moment, even with the declining exclusiveness of 'New Zealanderhood'.

First, we have to recognise the cultural diversity and pluralism that already exists here and that is likely to increase. For example, Barry Hindess (1992), writing about Australia but with obvious relevance for New Zealand, maintains that, if taken seriously, cultural pluralism challenges orthodox understandings of citizenship, the very egalitarianism of which can become totalitarian. According to the standard view, we are accorded citizenship as individuals, not as minority groups, and if we reside in a state's territory we are expected eventually to take on the status of citizens or to move on. In short, we are expected to assimilate. Hindess says that behind this egalitarian and radically individualistic view lies what I have already accused T. H. Marshall of---an unthinking assumption of national cultural homogeneity. This assumption is very peculiar, given that humans have experienced cultural diversity at least from the time that the first states were established. "The idea that the political community consists, or should normally consist, of those who share a common culture is an illusion [and] a dangerous one" (Hindess 1992:22; see also an interview with Ralf Dahrendorf cited by Denise Riley [1992:207] and her accompanying discussion of the tensions between equality and difference [1992:204-9]).

Whether intentionally or not, however, New Zealand's immigration policies of the last few years (setting aside the election-year hiccups which may see some tightening) creates a real obstacle in terms of the rethinking of citizenship by progressives. The problem I am alluding to is that those policies of greater openness, predicated on a 'thin' notion of citizenship, foster and exacerbate the very social divisions that benefit the neo-liberal programmes currently in place.

We all know about the 'second-class citizens' produced by targeted and stigmatising social welfare policies---the unemployed, the poor, the unskilled. In what might seem a paradox, however, I would argue that the new 'economic' immigrants are also marginal citizens. More than any other categories of migrant to this country, they are required to prove their usefulness. In short, their 'hyper-usefulness' serves as a useful moral contrast, from the neo-liberal perspective, to the 'uselessness' of the underclass: the entrepreneurial zeal of one highlighting the fecklessness of the other. Is it surprising, then, that the influx of the new categories of migrant has inflamed resentment, especially among those who constitute the dispossessed or those who fear they might enter those ranks? The resulting social divisions may not be intended as such by promoters of New Right policies, but I am sure that they are seen as unavoidable consequences that may be manageable, given the right mix of policies and a lot of luck, and which also occasionally even have their uses.

By contrast, I see citizenship as an emergent condition. Citizenship stems from changing and multiple criteria; for a significant proportion of the world's population citizenship itself may even be multiple (for example, dual nationality and passport holding, the European Union's common format passport, etc.).

It should also apply to 'private' (including domestic) as well as to 'public' spheres, if only because of the (increasing?) permeability of the boundary between those spheres. Too many theorists of social citizenship have insisted for too long that those admitted to the ranks of the privileged should be allowed entry only on condition that they prove their usefulness (Probert 1995:32-33). The proponents of full employment make this mistake. What they overlook is that being in full-time paid employment is often (wrongly) assumed to be useful; and as against those in the domestic sphere, the voluntary sector, and so on, full-time paid employees have rarely had to justify their citizenship status. If you have a waged job, the presumption is that you are useful; if you don't, the presumption is that you are useless (or pursue an occupation which is so sacred, such as motherhood or caring, that payment would besmirch its nobility).

Citizenship is an honourable occupation. Who has the right to define who is 'useful' and who is not? Some of the more hesitant supporters of UBI (e.g., Cass 1995, Probert 1995, Gorz 1992) claim that it will work only on the condition that its recipients are seen to 'participate' (e.g. in work deemed unattractive or socially necessary). But in this version of BI, sometimes known as 'Participation Income', which should come first---the participation or the income?

Do we feel that people deserve an adequate standard of living and social participation because of their past, present and/or future work or their financial contributions to our society? Or do we feel that they deserve it as of right, being citizens of the same society as ourselves?

The first question corresponds to the old socialist maxim of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work"; the second corresponds to the old maxim about a higher form of socialism or communism, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". Or perhaps UBI establishes a new maxim altogether: "from each according to their inclinations and abilities, to each according to their rights (of citizenship)".

Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon maintain that there is a pressing need to "reclaim social citizenship" by collapsing the distinction between, or resurrecting alternatives located, between, what they call 'social insurance' and 'public assistance' (see 1994:68-69). 'Social insurance' refers to the kind of contributory welfare schemes that only those with well-paid and secure jobs can afford; 'public assistance' refers to the stigmatised and increasingly targeted 'charity' provided by the (especially American) workfare state. They point to an immense failure of imagination and foresight on behalf of that large segment of the population which falls between these two alternatives and which is terrified of falling into the clutches of one ('assistance') but trapped in the ever-increasing demands of the other ('insurance'). As far as I am aware, neither Fraser nor Gordon, trenchant critics of welfare inequity though they are, has publicly advocated UBI, but isn't it the perfect institutional answer to their prayers?

Bellamy, Richard and John Greenaway
1995 The New Right Conception of Citizenship and the Citizen's Charter. Government and Opposition 30(4):469-91.

Cass, Bettina
1995 The Future of Income Support in an Open Economy: The Concept of Participation Income. In Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. Melbourne: Victorian Council of Social Services/ Good Shepherd Youth and Family Services.

Department of Internal Affairs (DIA)
1995 New Zealand Citizenship: Becoming a New Zealander. Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs / Te Tari Taiwhenua.

Fraser, Nancy and Linda Gordon
1994 Reclaiming Social Citizenship: Beyond the Ideology of Contract Versus Charity. In Paul James (ed.), Critical Politics. Melbourne: Arena Publications.

Gorz, André
1992 On the Difference Between Society and Community, and Why Basic Income Cannot by Itself Confer Full Membership of Either. In Philippe Van Parijs (ed.), Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform. London: Verso.

Hindess, Barry
1992 Citizens and Peoples. Australian Left Review (June) 140:20-23.

Jordan, Bill
1987 Rethinking Welfare. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1989 The Common Good. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Marshall, T. H.
1950 Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pixley, Jocelyn
1993 Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post-Industrial Options. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
1995 Combining Work and Welfare: A Low Wage Economy? In Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. Melbourne: Victorian Council of Social Services/ Good Shepherd Youth and Family Services.

Probert, Belinda
1995 Basic Income and Socially Useful Work. In Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. Melbourne: Victorian Council of Social Services/ Good Shepherd Youth and Family Services.

Purdy, David
1994 Citizenship, Basic Income and the State. New Left Review 208:30-48.

Riley, Denise
1992 Citizenship and the Welfare State. In John Allen, Peter Braham and Paul Lewis (eds), Political and Economic Forms of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press/Open University.

Roche, Maurice
1987 Citizenship, Social Theory, and Social Change. Theory and Society 16(3):363-399.

Van Parijs, Philippe
1991 Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20(2):101-31.
1992 Competing Justifications of Basic Income. In Philippe Van Parijs (ed.), Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform. London: Verso.

Watts, Rob
1995 Basic Income, Employment and Citizenship: Considerations on Pixley. In Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. Melbourne: Victorian Council of Social Services/ Good Shepherd Youth and Family Services.

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