What does it mean to be a citizen?
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The question of what does it mean to be a citizen has no simple answer. On a purely definition-based description, what it means to be a citizen is that a person is a legally recognised inhabitant of the country they live in – in the UK, this means they pay taxes and are entitled to the help of the benefits and NHS systems. However, in practice, answering the question what does it mean to be a citizen is far from easy. As new rules and tests for people wanting British citizenship show, being a citizen is about far more than a legal status. It is about understanding and accepting – and being a part of the culture, rather than an observer from the outside.
Understanding
Cultures are complex things to get a handle on. Depending on how different one person’s home culture is to another’s, there may be huge gaps in understanding of each other’s cultures. To truly be a citizen of a country, the person must fully understand its culture. This does not necessarily mean that person must blindly...
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