Abstract
In this chapter, we introduce the fundamental concepts used in this book. We observe that citizenship is an essentially contested concept. However, it is still possible to single out the core meaning of citizenship in conceptual terms as a lasting and relational personal status, characteristic of those who are full members of a self-governing polity. On such a basis, it is possible to distinguish citizenship from other recurrent personal statuses. The key conception in the practice of European states, democratic and social states citizenship, aims at reconciling the normative requirements stemming from the democratic state, the social state and the rule of law.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition, Marshall’s conception has been subject to considerable critical review in the last two decades. Many have pointed to shortcomings that can be related to the sociological and normative blinders prevailing at the time Marshall wrote (see for example Hoxsey 2011), but which may require rethinking the very contours of the concept of citizenship.
- 2.
In political theory, the debate on community and identity has often centred on whether nationalism is good or bad as an organising principle for such territorial polities (Miller 1995). We start out from the supposition that individual membership and community matter for citizenship. This is not an argument for nationalism, but rather an argument for a grounded approach to citizenship institutions and their practice, be it in the nation-state or the EU.
- 3.
The categories of asylum seekers and refugees are closely connected. In order to be recognised as a refugee, it is necessary first to make a formal application to that effect. Pending a resolution of the hosting authorities, the individual is said to be an asylum seeker. She becomes a refugee once such status has been formally acknowledged. As has been put by Amnesty International, not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognised as a refugee, but every refugee is initially an asylum seeker.
- 4.
Most, but not all, refugees enter the territory of the state in which they apply for asylum in a manner that is regarded as irregular by the law of the receiving state. It seems to us that it is open to not only moral, but also legal discussion whether this should be regarded as “irregular” in any sense. Moreover, in some cases refugees enter into the territory in a fully regular manner. This is the case of resettlement refugees (people who are registered as refugees by the United Nations Refugee Agency, but who cannot be offered a permanent solution in the country they are currently in and who are therefore offered resettlement in a third country), regarding their final country of destination.
- 5.
Historically, the permanent resident was often a national, that is, a person holding the status of nationality within a larger (federal or multinational) polity. The structure of citizenship and nationality in the Habsburg Empire is one example of such constructions of membership. We include nationality as a distinctive status, but in practice permanent residence is by far the more common status, at least in the contemporary world, as illustrated by present European practice.
- 6.
We use the term “alien” in a slightly narrower sense than in common parlance and in (especially US) legal definition. As we propose to define the terms, all those individuals who are not citizens can be characterised as “foreigners”, while those with no connections to the polity would be properly described as “aliens”. The alienus is literally somebody who belong somewhere else, while the forain is somebody who is strange.
- 7.
The development of physical and electronic communications has indeed rendered possible that some individuals enjoy civil and economic relationship with more than one polity. This should be recognised when granting the statuses of resident and of permanent resident . There should be more demanding criteria being applied concerning full membership, because there is a risk that plural membership is turned into a privilege based on wealth.
- 8.
Thus the turn to macroeconomics in economics, the interdisciplinary analysis of economic phenomena in social sciences or the constitutional interpretation of all legal sub-fields in legal disciplines. New disciplines and new perspectives changed the perception of societal problems. Economic phenomena were no longer regarded as quasi-natural phenomena, but as social phenomena open to be moulded and shaped by intentional political decisions, including the steering of economic activity or the structural shaping of foreign trade and cross-border economic activities. Legal relationships were no longer reconstructed and analysed by reference to civic rights, but were critically approached by reference to collective goods and the whole array of rights, importantly including wide political rights and social rights as part of one and the same fabric of society.
- 9.
This notion of the Democratic and Social State (which may be rendered more precise, but less friendly to the reader, by referring to the Democratic and Social Rechtsstaat) is at the core of the main argument in this book. In the following, we will use this phrase, but phrases such as the democratic state, the social state , the democratic and social state and the rule of law-based state will be used interchangeably, for the sake of readability.
- 10.
This entails, among other things, acknowledging that economic inequality is not the result not laziness or lack of capacity to work of those stuck in low-paid jobs, but a structural consequence of the existing socio-economic order (Titmuss 1968: 163).
- 11.
While we use the terms social and welfare state as interchangeable, we are aware of the differences between the two. The social state is a wider concept: There could be different ways of configuring socio-economic policy in order to ensure a sufficient degree of actual equality different from the welfare state, i.e. through centralised institutions guaranteeing the provision of a number of public goods and the redistribution of economic resources.
- 12.
The right to vote constitutes a paradigmatic example of the intertwinement of subjective rights, collective rights and collective goods. The individual right to vote, and eventually to stand for election, is meaningless if not supported by a wide range of collective goods (a vibrant public sphere, political parties, open media keen to report on relevant news, and not least, the very infrastructure of polling). It is exercised by each individual, but in coordination with the exercise of the same right by others. And is mediated by the right to association, reflected in the constitution of civic groups, associations, trade unions and political parties.
- 13.
A point raised already by Lambert (1921).
- 14.
In many cases, rights were only gained after openly and explicitly disobeying laws that blocked the realisation of the rights. In others, far too many, wars were the moulds on which rights were forged. This insight may go rather a long way to explain the shape and consistency of European citizenship as a personal status. The many weaknesses of the status may be the result of the peculiar historical trajectory leading to its emergence, and the scarce political mobilisation around the concept since then. No genuine full membership status may be open to be forged ‘in vitro’, in the salotti buoni of European politics. The imprint of actual political mobilisation might well be decisive.
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Menéndez, A.J., Olsen, E.D.H. (2020). The Concept and the Conception of Citizenship. In: Challenging European Citizenship. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22281-9_2
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