ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide a theoretical framework for the ways the closure mechanism of national citizenship is manipulated, how its manipulation depends on the prevailing national self‐understandings and, finally, how a specific use might be contested by other actors possessing another understanding of what it means to be member of the nation. All this brings us back to Tilly’s (1999: 252‐253) definition of citizenship, which we have outlined at the beginning of the previous chapter. While so far we have discussed a great deal the contractual nature of citizenship and its role in modern societies, we have only slightly touched on Tilly’s addendum that such contracts are never completely specified but rather modified by practice. This specification opens a window to follow a research strategy that has hardly been adopted so far in the study fields of citizenship and nationalism.
