ABSTRACT
Like the slogan of equality, citizenship is a plastic term which can be used in a variety of ways to mean a variety of things. As a broad umbrella term which can incorporate the demands of diverse movements and associations, it inevitably contains
conflicting and contradictory claims and discourses, including especially those discussed in the previous chapter. However, in a very general sense the reorientation of the debate in the 1980s onto rights was an important route towards reassessing the historical formulation of rights in France and, especially, questioning the link between rights and nationality.3 For, at the heart of the citizenship debate is the association, established at the time of the Revolution, between nationality and citizenship. The fact that, today, about four million people resident in France are not entitled to citizen status because they are not French nationals has led analysts and activists alike to question the basis of entitlement to rights in the modern state, and to attempt a redefinition of the social contract for the contemporary era. A major demand, supported by many movements and associations, has therefore been to dissociate citizenship from nationality and to base it instead on residence (of at least five years in the country). This would certainly be a major step towards a greater equality of rights between nationals and non-nationals since it would give immigrants political rights (although at present only voting in municipal rather than all elections is being debated) and offer full protection against expulsion from the country.
