The Politics of European Citizenship
The Politics of
European Citizenship
Deepening Contradictions in
Social Rights and Migration Policy
Peo Hansen and Sandy Brian Hager
First published in 2010 by
Berghahn Books
©2010, 2012 Peo Hansen and Sandy Brian Hager
First paperback edition published in 2012.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hansen, Peo.
The Politics of European Citizenship : Deepening Contradictions in Social Rights and Migration Policy> / Peo Hansen and Sandy Brian Hager.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84545-733-4 (hbk.) – ISNB 978-0-85745-621-2 (pbk.) – ISNB 978-1-84545-991-8 (ebk.)
1. Citizenship–European Union countries. 2. Civil rights—Europe. 3. European Union countries—Emigration and immigration. 4. European Union. I. Hager, Sandy Brian. II. Title.
JN40.H36 2010
323.6094–dc22
2010013458
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-84545-733-4 hardback
ISNB 978-0-85745-621-2 paperback
ISNB 978-1-84545-991-8 ebook
For historical and structural reasons, a European “constitution of citizenship” can only emerge on the condition of being more democratic than the traditional constitutions of the “national states”—or it will be deprived of any legitimacy, any capacity to “represent” the populations and solve (or mediate) their social conflicts (be they conflicts of economic interests or cultural-religious loyalties).
—Étienne Balibar
(We, the People of Europe?, 2004)
Introduction. European Integration and the Problem of Citizenship
I. Theory and History of EU Citizenship
Chapter 1. Theorizing Citizenship in the EU: Towards a Critical History
Chapter 2. The Origins of EU Citizenship (1950–1980)
II. The Current Trajectories of Citizenship Politics in the EU
Chapter 4. “No Rights Without Responsibilities”: Adapting Citizens for the New European Economy
Chapter 6. “At the Heart of Citizens’ Interests”: EU Migration Policy in the Hague Program
Afterword to the Paperback Edition
This book traces the politics of European citizenship as it has unfolded since the beginning of the European integration project in the 1950s to the present day. Our main focus, though, lies with the more contemporary developments, stretching from the mid-1980s—or the commencement of the EU’s Single Market project—until the present. The idea of writing this book took shape in the aftermath of the French and Dutch No votes in the referenda on the EU’s Constitutional Treaty in 2005. Ironically enough, as we were about to finish writing the book, in the summer of 2009, we found ourselves in the still uncertain aftermath of yet another “shocking” EU referendum: the Irish No to the Lisbon Treaty. (At the time of going to press, the Lisbon treaty had been ratified, in November 2009, via a second Irish referendum, held in October 2009.)
Given the serious challenges that the French and Dutch referenda were to pose to the direction of the European project, we felt an urge to craft an analysis that could provide both a broad and thorough understanding of the social purpose and historical trajectory of EU citizenship. We thus aimed to move beyond the existing approaches to the study of EU citizenship, which are largely dominated by rather narrow foci on normative prescriptions and visions, on the one side, and legal-institutional descriptions and policy recommendations, on the other. Through our broad focus on the interrelated matters of political economy, social rights, and migration—all of which were central elements in the heated referenda debates—we instead wanted to highlight the enormous stakes, deep-seated contradictions, and widening power asymmetries that shape the content, purpose, and struggle of EU citizenship. In essence, our intention was to speak to the urgency involved in the current politics of European citizenship: to a European Union plagued by increasing social exclusion and labour insecurity, rampant exploitation of rightless undocumented migrant workers, growing anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments, rising support for the racist extreme right, and blatant disregard for refugee and human rights,