Citizenship, Nationhood, and Non-Territoriality: Transnational Participation in Europe

Since the 1980s, the question of citizenship has taken root as a major theme in the social sciences and as the focus of juridical, political, social, and cultural debates in all democratic societies. In Europe, citizenship has taken different shapes and definitions in its rhetoric, ideology, and practice with regard to immigrants; incorporation into nation-states and their expansion of political participation beyond boundaries relating to home and host country to include a broad European space. Citizenship is also an issue for European construction itself. Within nation-states citizenship has been expressed in different domains extending from the national community to the civil society, even though only “legal” citizenship allows the full participation of individuals and groups in the political community. At the European level, despite the transnational participation of immigrants encouraged by the very nature of the European Union and its supranational institutions and de facto expansion of dual citizenship, the claim for equal recognition as citizens that underlies the political strategies of immigrants remains within the framework of the legitimacy of the state of residence and citizenship.