Introduction

Ali Emre Benli and Daniele Archibugi begin with providing an overview of different approaches to theorising citizenship and highlight the need to go beyond them in the face of the recent challenges European integration faces. Afterwards, Benli and Archibugi lay out aspects of a novel approach to European citizenship as a practice of claiming rights. They argue that a variety of social, political, and legal mechanisms in Europe provide fertile grounds for agents to claim rights. Finally, they describe what such a European citizenship implies in practice and how it is taken up in each chapter through analyses of different cases.