Booleans, CONSTANTS or mapping table for 'status'-like fields?

I am modelling a User table which needs to have the following information about the users: - is_active? - is_detained? - has_voluntarily_deactivated? - is_temporarily_suspended? and so on... Basically, these are boolean flags with true or false. So, I am considering few approaches other than boolean flags which are as follows: 1. Create a single varchar field with values like 'active', 'detained', 'deactivated', 'suspended', etc. 2. Create a tinyint field and map the integers to another table containing status strings 3. Create a tinyint field and map the integers in code itself using constants, such as ACTIVE = 1, DETAINED = 2, etc. Is Python's enum type the best solution to this? 4. Create a tinyint field and map the integers to status strings in an XML or JSON file Which of the above 4 or the original boolean style approach is preferable, or if there could be a completely different approach or a modified version of the above approaches, please let me know? Also, in my code, how should I call these fields, like: - if (user.status == 1), or something like - if (user.status == STATUS.ACTIVE), or - if (user.status == 'active') (I think this will depend on which approach I follow) These status values are not limited and may be added, edited or removed in future. Request you to answer in a database agnostic way and the programming language that I am using is Python. Thank you for your answers