POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

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Unit Summary

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

The meaning of citizenship must be understood historically and culturally.

Citizenship provides rights and entails responsibilities.

American citizenship requires a commitment to the principles and practices of constitutional democracy.

Becoming a citizen does not just happen. Citizenship results from the actions, habits and beliefs of individuals committed to public life.

Citizenship means being the kind of person who finds out about public issues, makes his or her opinion heard and listens to others respectfully. It means getting involved. It means being part of the solution to the challenges of public life.

KEY TERMS or CONCEPTS

Immigration/immigrant: a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence; to enter a country and usually become established; to come into a country of which one is not a native for the purpose of permanent residence.

Naturalization: to confer the rights of a national on; especially to admit to citizenship; to become established as a native.

Political recognition: the action of recognizing; the state of being recognized; formal acknowledgment of the political existence of a government or nation.

Rights: qualities (as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval; something to which one has a just claim such as the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled. Something that one may properly claim as due.