Dementia Citizenship Revisited: New Directions in Theory, Practice, and Lived Experience

Over the past two decades, citizenship discourse has become an important framework within dementia studies, shifting attention from individualised and deficit-oriented understandings of dementia toward the socio-political, legal, institutional, cultural and relational conditions that shape everyday life. This editorial introduces a 2026 special issue on dementia citizenship that explores the growth of this important field of dementia studies since the landmark 2016 special issue on citizenship was published in Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice. Highlighted in the 2026 special issue are contributions that extend scholarship on agency, participation, embodiment, rights, collaboration and social justice for persons living with dementia across long-term care, community care-collectives, and volunteering among persons living with dementia. Together, the articles demonstrate how citizenship is enacted, constrained, and supported, and how institutional routines, professional practices, interdependence, and recognition shape opportunities for participation and flourishing. Finally, the editorial emphasizes the importance of experiential knowledge in the development and review of this special issue, and in the co-authorship of one of the contributions. Collectively this editorial and the special issue that it introduces aims to stimulate further critical inquiry and practice development to ensure that persons living with dementia have equal opportunities to participate in social life and to flourish.