Social Movements and its Impact on the Formation of Citizenship Rights

Social movements refer to any collective effort that aims at securing certain interests or reaching a goal through an action outside the domain of official institution. These collective behaviors are the response to a special situation or issue. On the other hand, citizenship rights represent a set of citizenship obligations, responsibilities, and requests that address both the society and the government. Among the most important sources that contain and support citizenship rights in the current legislations one can refer to the Constitution; i.e. laws that have been codified by the elites and the regime based on cultural, political and social principles. This essay seeks to study in a descriptive-analytic way the nature of social movements their types and relations with the expansion and formation of citizenship rights. The chief conclusion is that social movements influence the structure of government and in this way they pave the path for establishing new legislations that can ground citizenship rights. The other function of social movement is the enhancement of the political and social consciousness in people that enables them to force the government to fulfill their aspirations