Fostering the Political Participation of EU Non-national Citizens: The Case of Brussels

Political participation is considered an essential feature of democracy. The European Union (EU) aimed to foster political participation with the introduction of European citizenship, which gives the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal and European Parliament elections in whichever EU country the citizen resides. However, from the few figures available, registration and turnout rates among mobile EU citizens seem very low. In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of a proactive campaign in order to promote the participation of European non-national residents in municipal elections by focusing on a specific initiative: the VoteBrussels Campaign. Focusing on Brussels, and in the general on the Belgian case, offers us the opportunity to carry out a quasi-experimental design. Our findings suggest that a mobilisation campaign has a positive regionwide effect on the participation of mobile EU citizens.

Contested European citizenship: Results from a 13 country survey

European citizenship consisting of equal economic, social and political rights for all EU citizens has come under pressure in recent years due to the different crises the EU had to face. Based on a survey conducted in 13 EU member states we examined to what extent EU citizens support the notion that citizens from other European countries should enjoy the same rights as nationals. Overall, 56% of EU citizens support the idea that citizens from other EU member states (EU migrants) and national citizens shall be treated equally. In addition, we find remarkable variation between the countries. Multivariate analyses indicate that cultural factors on the individual and the country level have a strong impact on attitudes towards Europeanized equality, whereas structural factors that are related to individuals’ and a countries’ socioeconomic position are only of minor importance.

Европейское гражданство, итальянская национальность и официальный миф «возвращения»: аргентинцы и чилийцы – потомки итальянских эмигрантов

На основе этнографического исследования в итальянской провинции Трентино автор анализиру-ет, что означает европейское гражданство для аргентинцев и чилийцев итальянского происхож-дения, эмигрирующих в Италию – то есть в Европу – благодаря наличию у них итальянского гражданства, унаследованного от предков. Рассматриваются практики и представления, связан-ные с двойной национальной принадлежностью, а также различные уровни коллективного член-ства, возникающие в эмиграции. Автор демонстрирует, каким образом обладание европейским гражданством способствует возобновлению эмиграции из Италии, в которую оказываются вовле-чены и потомки итальянцев из Латинской Америки. Эта мобильность ведет к пересмотру евро-пейской миграционной политики, смещая ее фокус с закрытия границ на “избирательную имми-грацию”. Таким образом, в статье поднимается вопрос о постоянном переопределении границ между “своими” и “чужими” в Европе. Building on ethnographic research undertaken in the Trentino region, this article analyses what being a Eu-ropean citizen means for Argentineans and Chileans of Italian descent who emigrate to Italy, and thus to Europe, thanks to the Italian nationality they have inherited from their ancestors. It analyses the different uses and representations associated with dual nationality as well as the scales of belonging that accompany this mobility, showing that the possession of European citizenship is fostering the current resurgence of Ital-ian emigration, including from Latin America. The article also argues that this mobility has brought into question European migration policies, shifting the focus from the rhetoric of border closures to practices of selective immigration. It thus questions the constant redefining of boundaries in Europe between “us” and “them”.

Conclusion

The book comes to four main conclusions. Contrary to an influential theory (Rogers Brubaker), it is, first, not discursive idioms about the nation that primarily determine the inclusive or exclusive character of citizenship. Rather, it was changing politico-social constellations—economic, demographic, and foreign policy interests and conjunctions—that defined the political form and practice of citizenship. Second, contrary to a dominant narrative, the frequently alleged qualitative divide of legal culture from Western to Eastern Europe is called into question. Third, the book’s historical cross-section supports a critical review of the widespread theory of convergence between regimes of citizenship in Europe. It specifies, instead, the historical conditions for expectations of Europeanization through law and thus for European citizenship. Fourth, the history of citizenship in Europe since the nineteenth century cannot be told as an exclusively European one. The politics and colonial practices of affiliation in the European powers’ overseas and continental colonial empires remained in effect well into the postcolonial policies of citizenship and migration, thus also shaping the inheritance of a current policy of citizenship in Europe.

Struggles for Belonging

Citizenship was the mark of political belonging in Europe in the twentieth century, while estate, religion, party, class, and nation lost political significance in the century of extremes. This thesis is demonstrated by examining the legal institution of citizenship with its deciding influence on the limits of a political community in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Citizenship determines a person’s protection, equality, and freedom and thus his or her chances in life and survival. This book recounts the history of citizenship in Europe as the history of European statehood in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, doing so from three vantage points: as the development of a legal institution crucial to European constitutionalism; as a measure of an individual’s opportunities for self-fulfilment ranging from freedom to totalitarian subjugation; and as a succession of alternating, often sharply divergent, political regimes, considered from the perspective of their inclusivity and exclusivity, and their justification. The European history of citizenship is discussed for six selected countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia. For the first time, a joint history of citizenship in Western and Eastern Europe is told here, from the heyday of the nation-state to our present day, which is marked by the crises of the European Union. It is the history of a central legal institution that significantly represents and at the same time determines struggles over migration, integration, and belonging. One of the central concerns of this book is the lessons that can be learned from it regarding the future chances of European citizenship.

Citizenship-as-knowledge: How perspectives from Bildung-centred Didaktik can contribute to European Citizenship Education beyond competence

How can the teaching of knowledge in schools contribute to the development of students as individual human beings, with the capacity not only for problem solving within the existing structures of society but also for developing ideas and solutions that go beyond the existing structures? The purpose of this article is to bring this question to the forefront within the context of citizenship education (CE) through a theoretical analysis of the epistemology underpinning two dominant conceptualisations of teaching CE. The analysis shows that both the model of teaching about, through and for democracy that underpins the understanding of CE in competence frameworks and the conceptualisation of CE as teaching directed towards qualification, socialisation and subjectification that is used to criticise citizenship-as-competence fall short in accounting for how knowledge can play a part in taking us beyond the existing. Turning to Bildung-centred Didaktik, which has dealt extensively with questions of knowledge in relation to the formation of the individual subject, the article explores how a renewed focus on knowledge can contribute to answering the question that Joris et al. pose in the title of their article ‘Citizenship -as-competence, what else?’

Negotiating Sharia in Secular State: A Case Study in French and Germany

The European Muslims, the majority of them come from Muslim countries, are facing the identity dilemma. On the one hand, they are the Muslims who are obliged to carry out their religious teaching, but on the other hand, they are the Muslims who have acquired European citizenship who cannot enforce religious laws and instead submit to secular state laws. The study analyzes French and Germany Muslim aspirations and their negotiations on carrying out sharia in the secular state. This is field study by qualitative approach. Primary data was collected by interviews with Muslims of Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, and Turkish descent living in France and Germany. The study found that French and German Muslims want to apply sharia, but France and Germany do not allow religious law to be made a state law. These have left French and German Muslims to negotiate without opposition, resistance, and conflict. As European citizens, they accept secular law without losing their religious and social identity, though couldn’t fully implement Sharia.

European Citizenship in the Ongoing Brexit Process

Although traumatic, the ongoing Brexit process does not fundamentally alter either the legal status of European citizenship or the debates about it within the European Union (EU). Citizenship and free movement are so fundamental to the European project that even the new status of an important state like the UK does not change the political dynamics surrounding them.