Clementine’s work explored the experiences of women involved in Self Reliant Groups, an emerging phenomena in the UK, based on a model of economic and community development in India. Using an ethnographic approach she found that SRGs are important spaces in which women feel valued and confident. The key characteristics of the groups, productive activity and savings have given members a sense of purpose and control. This contrasts with the experiences of many of their day-to-day roles and interactions with the social security system. As single mothers and unpaid carers, their roles in society are not recognised by welfare to work policies that focus primarily on the duty of citizens to partake in paid work. In successive governments, political rhetoric has derided those who have chosen a so-called ‘lifestyle on benefits’ and pitted them against the hard workers of ‘alarm clock Britain’, whilst policy has placed high levels of conditionality and the threat of sanctions on those who do not, or cannot meet this ideal of a citizen-worker. Using citizenship theory as a conceptual and analytical lens SRGs’ activities can be understood as ways that women are enacting various forms of active citizenship.  Developing a continuum of active citizenship Clementine’s work offers an important contribution to understanding the variety of ways in which people perceive and practice their citizenship, and the potential challenges they face.