ABSTRACT
The point of departure for this book, as formulated in Chapter 1, falls back on T.H. Marshall’s (1950) notion of effective citizenship. In his analysis of the historical development of citizen rights, Marshall proceeds beyond citizenship as a legal concept and introduces it as a sociological one. In his view, citizenship can be seen as an ideal ‘against which achievement can be measured and towards which aspirations can be directed’ (1950: 28). This conception, in turn, allows us to describe our endeavour as a crossnational inquiry into the realisation of citizenship.
