Concept in Definition ABC

In our language the concept of citizen has a recurrent use and various meanings are attributed to the term.

Natural individual or who is a neighbor of a community

The most general and recognized use allows to designate that natural individual or that is a neighbor of a community or specific geographical place within a nation, because he lives there permanently. One cannot be a citizen of several places at the same time, but rather one is a citizen of that territory in which he lives, works or develops at all levels.

That proper or relative to a city

Also, we use the word recurrently to indicate everything that is proper or relative to a city.

Political-legal condition that applies to that person who lives in a state and as such has civil and political rights that may be exercised

And on the other hand, as a third sense of the term we must say that the word citizen is also used to refer to a political-legal condition that is applies to all those who live in a given state and as such have civil and political rights that they can exercise and no one can prevent them.

Normally, the notion of citizen implies the coexistence in community with other citizens, who together make up a certain type of society that, in order to organize itself, must be legally and politically ordered.

The term citizen is directly linked to the idea of ​​the city, a settlement in which it is considered that the human being began to organize as a society. The notion of coexistence in the same space, shared by other human beings (such as the city), implied from a first moment the need to establish rights and duties that will organize life in accordance with that community. It is impossible for a nation to develop satisfactorily if it is not organized and very less in this context of disorganization that a citizen can exercise the aforementioned rights that he has as such.

Conception that was born during the French Revolution

However, it would not be until the period of the French Revolution that the notion of citizen would appear as a subject who possesses certain political rights (access to the participationpolitics, elect representatives), social (access to certain social services) or legal (equality before the law without distinction of races or classes). The citizen also has duties of the same type that have to do with compliance with certain laws such as respect for the rights of others, by maintaining certain guidelines of conduct, for the commitment to society itself, etc.

Normally applies to subjects of voting age

In most of today's societies, the term citizen is applied to those of legal age and not to children or adolescents under 18 years of age. This normally has to do with the political participation that a citizen exercises when accessing the suffrage and thus electing its political representatives, right to which you do not have access until the age of 18 (or in some countries less or more).

Now, beyond the above, we must say that all, regardless of age, are citizens of the country in which they reside, children, adolescents and adults, all.

Becoming a citizen of a non-native country is possible

Although it is usual for a person to be a citizen of the place where he was born and where his parents and other ancestors have lived, it is also possible that an individual who was not born in a given geographical place can become a citizen of that nation after the completion of a procedure and the effective fulfillment of a series of terms.

Generally, when a person settles in a country to work, after a certain period of time, they will be able to start the process of citizenship that grants him the same civil and political rights as a natural inhabitant. There are even people who are citizens of two countries at the same time.

Other circumstances that can make someone a citizen of a country is to marry civilly a person who is a citizen of that nation or perform the process of obtaining citizenship due to their ancestry corresponding to the nation in question, that is, someone processes to be a Spanish citizen because her grandfather it was. There are many countries like Spanish, for example, that allow the descendants of their natural citizens carry out the citizenship process and also become Spanish citizens with all the rights that this entails it implies.

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