Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on citizenship as a contested concept. We understand citizenship as objects of interpretative disputes both in their empirical reality and when they are used as analytical categories. we are not only interested in citizenship as an analytical lens, a script and a building block of comparative studies, but also as a historical, changing, contested and controversial political concept. We explore how it is constructed through the usages of the concept in various theories, debates and practices. It contributes to the tradition of citizenship studies by analysing the politics of the concept of citizenship through an approach that focuses on the contestedness of concepts and, vice versa, on the tradition of conceptual studies and conceptual history through a conceptual historical exercise focusing on citizenship.