People practice citizenship with others around common tasks, even if they don't like or agree with one another. This broader way to understand citizenship identifies the citizen as a public actor. A public actor not only has rights, but responsibilities and opportunities to contribute to, and create, public life. Citizens are ordinary people who work together to define what works and what doesn't in their country, their cities, and their neighborhoods, then work to build on what is positive and fix what is negative. Defined this way, anyone can be a citizen, but it is not a status automatically conferred.
Citizenship means engaging in public work and public work takes practice.
This cynical view of politics is so pervasive that we often believe it is intrinsic. However, people haven't always thought of politics as so base. Politics, in its basic sense, meant the way people made decisions. From this perspective, the partisan games played by politicians, while visible and of certain consequence, were only a small, negative part of a much larger, positive picture. Engaging in politics, understood as the way people made decisions in their public work, gave people the chance to make a difference.