Historias de derecho y ciudadanía

Abstract

Citizenship consists of the relationship between the individuals that inhabit a country and the State, which exercises sovereignty over said country through a social contract. Colombia has signed most of the international human rights covenants and the 1991 Political Constitution ratified the intention of protecting and guaranteeing civil, political, social and cultural rights to its citizens; however, the figures are conclusive when it comes to proving the non-compliance with the covenant: the concentration of land ownership, poverty rates, victims of the armed conflict, labor informality, low coverage of the pension system, child labor, among others, which shows an ambiguity in the Colombian social contract. Through life stories, the way in which Colombians construct the notion of citizenship and establish the relationship with the State is traced. In this way, it is concluded that different forms of citizenship coexist in Colombia, which means that not everyone has the same rights. The five life trajectories addressed in this paper allow us to conclude that between the extremes of exclusion and full recognition, there are five types of citizenship: non-citizenship, inverted citizenship, partial citizenship, full individual citizenship and full collective citizenship; each one is constructed as a result of the place of origin, the educational level, the social-relational capital and above all the insertion into the labor market and/or access to the means of production.