City Research Online

Abstract

One of the most momentous implications of European citizenship has been the association it has brought about between the status of citizenship and the right to free movement. Much ink has been spilt over this association, its problems, and its promise. However the attention, at least in the legal literature, has fallen mostly on the relation between intra-EU migrant citizens and their host Member States. This article shifts the attention towards the relation between the home Member State and its citizen-migrant. It questions how European citizenship changes the citizenship-mobility nexus in the context of this relation. Its central argument is that through challenging the assumption that citizenship is a settled condition, European citizenship produces a novel iteration of this nexus, migrant citizenship that is. In the context of migrant citizenship, citizenship is the very enabling factor of international movement, and mobility becomes in turn a citizen’s freedom. The article sketches the traits of migrant citizenship and sets it against three other configurations of the citizenship mobility nexus. It then weighs the implications of migrant citizenship in the context of three different research agendas. With regard to European citizenship and its prospects, the perspective of migrant citizenship invites to decentralize the search for answers on pressing questions of solidarity and democratic participation. Beyond the European citizenship context, it offers a novel analytical tool for other forms of regional free movement beyond the EU one. In a broader perspective, migrant citizenship contributes to the citizenship and immigration field, reframing the relation between citizenship’s exclusive outer shell and its inclusive inner core.

Publication Type:	Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration K Law > K Law (General)
Departments:	The City Law School The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads