Rights are exercised through group membership like citizenship, not universal humanity

Evidence

Like responsibility and guilt, privileges and rights are also a matter of group membership. Few aspirational statements are more fictional than “all men are created equal or free.” Politically, most of the rights individuals enjoy are as individuals who are members of specific groups, rather than in terms of universal or natural rights. Most obvious are the rights enjoyed through citizenship. Lack of individual rights is not merely a matter of oppression, but of the conventional social order. We are citizens of a state, not members of humanity, as far as our rights are concerned. This simple observation seems to escape much of the public discussion surrounding human rights where aspirations are confused with political reality. We should recognize that membership in an identity group, nation, or social class often overwhelms individual attributes. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 2059

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Citizenship and humanity, though linked, are not the same status — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 699; Human rights only hold for those who hold citizenship in a nation.; Human rights attach to national citizenship, leaving the stateless unprotected — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 333 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Human rights attach to national citizenship, leaving the stateless unprotected #corroborates (0.95) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 333
• Human rights only hold for those who hold citizenship in a nation. #corroborates (0.92)
• Human rights are actually citizens’ rights that can be lost without producing absolute rightlessness. #corroborates (0.90) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 721
• The human-rights declaration makes sovereign states, not persons, the arbiters of individual fate. #expands (0.80)
• Citizenship and humanity, though linked, are not the same status #expands (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 699