Direitos fundamentais sociais e mínimo existencial : uma pauta emancipatória para o desenvolvimento da cidadania

Abstract

This paper, bearing the title Fundamental social rights and existential minimum: An emancipation agenda for the development of citizenship, seeks to locate the function of the fundamental social rights existential minimum in fostering citizenship within the institutional framework of pluralistic democracy and, as a result, in conceiving the human being as an autonomous decision-making center, and also to establish criteria guiding the outline of its normative content. For this, John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness in its original version is investigated, especially in its political outline, as well as the criticism and counter-arguments brought by Amartya Sen’s idea of justice and specifically the capabilities approach by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Elizabeth Anderson, thus setting up a theoretical common ground in order to understand the existential minimum as a fundamental social right. The origins and evolution of the concept of citizenship are reviewed, establishing its characteristic elements and deducing its meaning in today’s political scenario from the different currents concerning its coming into being. Arguments are analyzed about the concepts of citizenship offered by the republican, communitarian, and liberal currents, pointing their deficiencies and biases and showing that the social dimension of citizenship shares the same space and the same importance status of both remaining dimensions (civil and political citizenship), stressing that the notion of citizenship as a whole is jeopardized in the case any one of them is missing. A point is made that a basic set of social contributions is an essential part of democratic citizenship. The function of the existential minimum is defined as the fostering and (re)building of citizenship. The close link between the existential minimum and the exercise of democracy and the full attainment of citizenship is highlighted. Finally, it is proposed that the existential minimum’s normative content must include a fairness index of primary social goods and/or the material (factual) conditions that allow people access to these interests, while taking into account the society’s peculiarities.