128 Kingston legal status. In cases of both de facto and de jure statelessness, however, this robust form of political membership is limited or missing entirely. While international human rights frameworks assert that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’1 and therefore have rights simply because they are human, in reality there are clear linkages between citizenship status and one’s ability to access fundamental rights. As a result, stateless individuals face a plethora of human rights violations. The negative consequences that result from lack of functioning citizenship are hardly new, although globalized emphases on documentation and surveillance certainly make statelessness an increasingly unbearable condition. In reality, the ideal of functioning citizenship is rarely attained; the de facto and de jure stateless are denied access to state protections, while various ‘semicitizens’ hold legal nationality but cannot access the full range of privileges inherent to citizenship. Expanding on Elizabeth F. Cohen’s concept of ‘semicitizenship’, this article contends that membership exists along a spectrum and requires not only the granting of formal citizenship, but also attention to the functionality of that relationship. Government-sponsored identities will continue to be important prerequisites for rights protection within the modern ‘society of states’, but truly functioning citizenship requires us to expand our understandings of responsibility and membership. The international community must critically examine the ways that individuals are recognized as worthy of human rights. 2 Citizenship and Human Rights Many scholars believe that a central function of citizenship is to make members of a political community equal, and that is accomplished by creating a ‘single, unitary political identity’.2 At a broader level, citizenship signifies inclusion within a bounded group that enjoys a range of fundamental rights. In his foundational work, T.H. Marshall begins with the premise that there is a basic human equality associated with full political membership, or of citizenship. He asserts that citizenship cannot be fully attained until every citizen enjoys a full array of rights, including essential civil, political, and social rights.3 1 United Nations, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (1948) <http://www.un.org/en/ documents/udhr/> accessed 19 October 2013. 2 Elizabeth F. Cohen, Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Politics (CUP 2009) 3. 3 T.H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development: Essays by T.H. Marshall (Doubleday: 1965). tilburg law review 19 (2014) 127-135