citizenship

Citizenship is the legal status of belonging to a country: the passport, the vote, the right to live and work there and to be let back in. You are born with it, or you apply for it, sit a test and swear an oath at a ceremony in a town hall.

You hold, gain, apply for, lose or renounce citizenship, and some countries allow dual citizenship while others make you choose. The word also names behaviour rather than status — good citizenship means playing your part where you live, and companies talk about corporate citizenship when they want credit for it. In British schools Citizenship is a subject: rights, laws, voting, how councils work. Do not swap it with residency, which is only permission to live somewhere and stops at the border. Nationality overlaps with it, and nationality is the word most passports actually print.