Abstract
Citizenship does not equal belonging. In this paper, we investigate how the disjunction between the ‘imagined community’ and the formal citizenry impacts on citizens’ rights. In particular, we analyse decision-making on the family migration rights of citizens in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Our analysis shows that in these three countries, notwithstanding their different migration and citizenship regimes, the reduction of citizens’ family migration rights is based on the same discursive mechanism: the ‘membership’ of citizens of migrant origin who marry a partner from abroad is called into question. As they are excluded from membership of the imagined community, their entitlement to family migration rights is decreased. Ethnic conceptions of national community, intersecting with gender and class, play a crucial role in shaping the rights attached to citizenship in Europe today.
Highlights
On 13 January 2015, David Pujadas, lead newsreader of France’s major public television news bulletin, messed up
We investigate whether, when and how civil servants and politicians problematize the membership of citizens of migrant origin, and whether, when and how this results in reducing citizens’ family migration rights
This paper started from the observation of a common trend in North Western Europe towards reducing the family migration rights of citizens
Summary
On 13 January 2015, David Pujadas, lead newsreader of France’s major public television news bulletin, messed up. Assuming like Yuval-Davis that intersecting vectors of inclusion and exclusion are mutually constitutive, in the sense that ‘there is no meaning to the notion of “black” (...) which is not gendered and classed’ (2007, 565), we will inquire throughout our analysis how constructions of (non)membership based on ethnicity and race intersect with gender and class. We take both ethnicity and race to be (self)ascribed, socially construed identity categories, where ethnicity is defined along cultural, religious, historical and linguistic lines and where race is defined according to presumed biological or physical characteristics
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call