Want to become a British citizen? First you will need to answer a few simple multiple-choice questions about life in the UK. Get them right and you’ll be singing your heart out with the other lucky passport winners at the citizenship day tea party. Get them wrong and you’re on the first flight back to Zimbabwe.One of the latest buzz words to emerge on both sides of the Atlantic is “active citizenship”. According to the Home Office, active citizenship “is about taking part”. Taking part in what?.Since we retreated into seeing ourselves as consumers, we are all deemed to be irredeemably passive couch potatoes. Politicians are keen to use citizenship to redress the balance. Active citizens are not indifferent or lazy. They are fully au fait with what is going on in the community. They do not walk on by on the other side of the road. This keep-fit theory of citizenship is all about doing your bit — part information junkie, part social worker, part activist, part nosy parker.The immigrant hordes who arrived in early 20th-century America, on their way to Ellis Island but with a hopeful glint in their eyes lit up by the Statue of Liberty, would hardly have needed multiple choice to express what they saw in their new home. All this jumping through hoops — tests, ceremonies, geeing us all up into active, informed citizens — may be our way of distracting ourselves from the real problem. What we need is something to be a citizen about.Excerpted from an article by James Harkin in ‘The Guardian’, November 5
