ABSTRACT
The argument of this chapter is twofold. It is suggested here that, despite criticisms that European citizenship is cosmetic, the rights associated with citizenship are no longer regulated or guaranteed exclusively by the institutions of nation-states but have, in addition, an increasingly significant European dimension. This is not to say that citizenship as we have known it is being relocated to a new ‘state’ called Europe. Rather, there is a greater plurality of formal and informal channels through which people may participate, attempt to have needs met and seek redress or change. The second aspect of the chapter is that the protection of citizens’ rights may depend upon institutional pluralism and human diversity and not, as sometimes is argued in order to minimise the prospects of European citizenship, on political and social homogeneity.
