Citizenship and people living with dementia: A case for the ethics of care.

Abstract

The ethics of care is an emerging field of interest in many disciplines, including care for people with dementia. The ethics of care as proposed by Joan Tronto is a political argument for care together with a set of principles, the integrity of care, to guide and critique practice. This two-pronged approach enables on one hand, a political, complex and situated examination of inequality, and on the other hand the integrity of care provides a set of principles to guide inclusive citizenship practices. This approach has the significant advantage of recognition of the fight that people with dementia face to achieve rights and citizenship as an issue of social justice. In this paper, three challenges to citizenship are discussed in relation to people with dementia using an ethics of care lens: (a) citizenship as a relationship between the individual and the state; (b) citizenship as a practice and (c) citizenship as identity and belonging. I propose that citizenship can be achieved by promoting inclusion in defining and creating policy, research and practice.