ABSTRACT
In the 1970s and 1980s the debate on citizenship seemed to be in its death throes. However, the last decade has proven that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of the death of citizenship has been grossly exaggerated. A significant number of new theories of citizenship is being constructed, developed and reviewed.1 The reason for this renewal is that the notion has proved to be extremely useful in the current climate of political fragmentation, individualization and pluralization on the one hand, and political integration on the other, by providing a way to deal with the relations of the individual to larger (national or supranational) political entities (Kymlicka and Norman 1994: 352-4; Van Gunsteren 1998: 8-10). In uniting Europe, it was largely the introduction of ‘European citizenship’ (or, more accurately, citizenship of the European Union) by Article 8 of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 which invigorated the debate, since European citizenship introduced new theoretical and practical problems (such as split or multiple loyalties) for a large part of the European population (Balibar 1996; Meehan 1993; Weiler 1999).
