European citizenship is a good example of a concept that is being used continually without a clear consensus on what it might or should actually constitute. Is European citizenship merely about feeling involved in what happens in the rest of Europe, just like claiming to be a world citizen merely means you care about what happens on the other side of the globe? Or is there more to it? Maybe the concept of European citizenship should be given some real legal weight. This is just what Fiorella Dell'Olio argues for in her recent book The Europeanization of Citizenship.
Fiorella Dell'Olio is a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She has previously done research at the European University Institute in Florence and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Some parts of The Europeanization of Citizenship have previously appeared in articles in Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and in Accountability and Legitimacy in the European Union (Arnull and Wincott eds., 2002).
In this highly informative book Dell’Olio analyses the link that the establishment of European citizenship creates between citizenship, nationality and immigration policies. She points out that there is no single way of understanding citizenship and its relation to nationality, immigration and identity. According to her, there is no theoretical model underlying it and disagreements on the topic often arise from various conflicting explications of concepts and definitions.
Dell’Olio describes and discusses the multi-faceted nature of citizenship practices throughout the ages and points out that changes in society have enabled the means of citizenship to be re-prioritised. In this respect, the re-prioritisation of social rights over political rights in the European Union creates the need to redefine the legal status of individuals legally residing in the European Union and to detach citizenship’s means from national citizenship. This Europeanisation embodies, according to Dell’Olio, the ‘opportunity structure’ for an effective change in the function of citizenship.
Dell’Olio analyses the impact of European citizenship at the nation-state level in Italy and the United Kingdom with regard to domestic policy-making in the areas of immigration and citizenship. After the establishment of European citizenship in Maastricht, member states have devised new definitions of national citizenship and have reshaped their national immigration policies. This has strengthened the principle of nationality as the primary criterion of EU citizenship. European citizenship has thus reinforced the ideology of nationality and has simultaneously defined the category of ‘us’. Dell’Olio argues that European citizenship, as it is currently formulated, merely strengthens the relationship between citizenship and nationality and has consequently failed to forge a European identity. Citizenship and nationality are interchangeable and both linked with immigration, which reinforces the typology of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Dell’Olio sees a threat in this new supra-national identity, as it legitimises discrimination and intolerance against third-country nationals.
To detach (European) citizenship’s means from nationality or national citizenship the concept of ‘legality’ within the European Union needs to be reformulated. Member states do not agree however what constitutes legal status for third-country nationals and there still remain serious legal and political obstacles to the formulation of a new concept of ‘legality’ at the supra-national level. However, Dell’Olio argues that the elimination of nationality as a pre-condition for the exercise of certain rights is an important step towards the coexistence of European and national models. The definition of legality should be established at the EU level with legal residence rather than nationality as main criterion. Dell’Olio suggests that the separation of nationality from the state can occur through constitutional guarantees designed to assure the preservation of national identity as a cultural value while engendering a more post-national concept of civil, political and social rights.
To make all this work in practice, an inclusive framework in the European Union should be constructed that permits both EU citizens and legally resident non-EU citizens to reap the benefits of the supra-national state. According to Dell’Olio the European polity should in any case have greater consideration of public attitudes to be able to successfully promote this inclusive regime.
Judith Baltus, Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek, Amsterdam
Fiorella Dell’Olio, The Europeanization of Citizenship: Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)