ABSTRACT
Citizenship may have historically been linked to the emergence and crystallisation of national-statist communities, but can no longer be confined within them. Citizenship rights can be granted by other levels of jurisdiction, and duties need not be reduced to those which individuals owe the state (Steenbergen 1994). The introduction of the supranational institution of Union citizenship by the Treaty on the European Union (1 November 1993), as a supplement to national citizenship, has shown that individuals can be members of multiple, diverse, overlapping and interacting political communities (Meehan 1993). More importantly, Union citizens have the right to enter the territory of another Member State, to reside there and take up activities as employed or self-employed persons without requiring the host state’s consent. At the infranational level too, the mobilisation of ethnic migrant groups in Western Europe has called into question traditional assumptions about the unity and homogeneity of national publics, thereby prompting several states to reconsider their responses to demands for respect for unassimilated otherness (i.e., the challenge of diversity) and for political inclusion (i.e., the challenge of membership).
