ABSTRACT
European citizenship and individual rights have, since the advent of European post-war unification, been seen as a new form of citizenship which would both transcend the nationalism of borders and the democratic deficit of supranational institutions. This dual promise has been central, both to political and academic discourse on “citizenship beyond the nation-state”. Through a critical analysis of European citizenship developments in the last crisis-ridden decade of EU politics, this chapter takes issue with this overly benign understanding. Studied through the conception of citizenship as full membership in a political community, the chapter highlights how supranational policies and responses to crises have led to a differentiation of personal statuses in the EU, whereby European citizens become subsumed under a system of unequal rights regimes depending on their personal status, especially linked to work, financial self-sufficiency, and free movement. Examples such as the post-enlargement limitations on free movement, post-crises exclusion of the “economically non-active”, and the precariousness of asylum seekers are utilised to discuss how domination and arbitrary rule may create new forms of rights differentiation and exclusion in what is often understood as a space for inclusion in “mobile Europe”. Moreover, emphasis is put on the developments in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the inclusion/exclusion nexus of rights and residence in the EU should be further scrutinised. In so doing, the chapter questions as to whether EU citizenship has reached its liberating potential and has to some degree become a new tool of differentiating and exclusionary practices against some groups of citizens.
