Dora Kostakopoulou

Matters of Control: Integration Tests, Naturalisation Reform and Probationary Citizenship in the United Kingdom

In the new millennium there has been a shift away from multiculturalism and the politics of difference towards integration, assimilation and a gradual ‘thickening’ of political belonging. The alleged weaknesses of the multicultural model and advantages of thicker, communitarian notions of community are highlighted in recent discourses on migrant incorporation and increasingly reflected in citizenship and migration policies across European countries. In this paper I critically examine citizenship reform and civic integration policies in the United Kingdom and argue that the fashionable language of integration represents a politically dated and normatively deficient approach to ethnic diversity. I furnish the basic tenets of an alternative pluralist mode of inclusion based on respectful symbiosis and the ‘letting be’ of groups of migrant origin, and examine the conditions for such a models empirical implementation.

The Anatomy of Civic Integration

Recent legislation on migration and citizenship in Europe and the EU framework on integration require migrants to meet integration requirements in order to enter, reside, reunite with their families and naturalise in the host country. Mandatory language course attendance and examination tests are viewed as means of enhancing integration, which is now framed as a ‘two way’ process or a contractual agreement between migrants and the host society. Despite the deployment of the notion of a contract, integration is, in reality, a one way process aimed at procuring conformity, discipline and migration control. Civic integration rests on an artificial homogenisation and displays the same elements of paternalism and ethnocentricity that characterised past initiatives. The civic integration paradigm is a crucial feature of a renewed, albeit old-fashioned, nationpolitics used by political elites to provide answers to a wide range of issues and to elicit support for a controlling state in the first decade of the 21st century.

Co-Creating European Union Citizenship: Institutional Process and Crescive Norms

By paying attention to processes and institutional change, EU citizenship emerges as a co-created institution. It is the product of institutional design and co-creation by actors at all levels of governance and is shaped by multilogues at the ‘top’, ‘bottom’ and ‘sideways’ as well as by citizens’ formal and informal actions. A co-creation perspective leads us to reconsider state-centered assumptions about which form of citizenship should be predominant and the dualism of centralism (supra-nationalism) versus ‘home-rule’ (inter-governmentalism) and to embrace a genuinely citizen-centered perspective. The article develops the co-creation paradigm, examines its dimensions, various forms and patterns and, by discussing the post-Rottmann and Zambrano case law (McCarthy, Dereci, Iida, O., S. and L. and Ymeraga) as well as Tsakouridis and P.I., sheds light onto the complex dynamics that make EU citizenship a vehicle of transformative institutional change but can also work against it.

Imagine: European Union Social Citizenship and Post-Marshallian Rights and Duties

Writing in 1959, Ortega y Gasset noted that ‘reality is not closed and reduced to the past and the present, but holds open the frontier of the future in which the real will be something that has yet to come into being.’ Ferrera and the other contributors in this forum have opened up a debate on the future of EU citizenship and argued for its ‘renovation’ in the light of rising Euroscepticism and nationalist centrifugalism in the member states. Ferrera shares Baubock’s diagnosis that EU citizenship has not met its integrative potential. While renovation is not always innovation, Ferrera has laid down the path for innovative thinking about the (future) content of EU citizenship and for the introduction of ‘soft’ citizenship duties which would strengthen the ties that bind EU citizens. I am in favour of ‘soft’ as well as ‘hard’ EU citizenship duties and I argue here that EU citizenship is not, and cannot be, duty free.

Cloud Agoras: When Blockchain Technology Meets Arendt’s Virtual Public Spaces

The virtual public space of blockchain communities will make citizens think, engage and act more virtually. In other words, the virtual reality of cloud agoras will have an impact on institutions and the participants themselves; it will yield pressures for more open, transparent and accountable institutions and will result in more virtuous, that is, actively engaged, citizens. Whether cloud agoras will prove to be decisive public spaces and strong promoters of democratic processes that make wealth, power and privilege accountable or merely subaltern counter publics will depend on the intentions and actions of their participants. In other words, the answer to the question whether the virtual public space of global citizenship will have a decisive influence on global, regional and national public policy-making is not theoretical or scholarly; it will be a contextual one.

Scala Civium : citizenship templates post-Brexit and the European Union’s duty to protect EU citizens

Brexit opened the way for the ‘restoration’ of British sovereignty and, if an EEA model (or an EEA†like model) is not chosen following the activation of Article 50 TEU, EU citizens settled in the UK will be requested to apply for either UK nationality or permanent leave to remain. The same applies to UK nationals residing in other Member States who will lose their EU citizenship status. Unexpectedly, 3.9 million EU citizens have been transformed into ‘guests’ or ‘foreigners’ in communities they call ‘their own’. Although naturalization in the state of residence might be seen to furnish a secure and fully recognized status for EU citizens, I argue that it is not an adequate policy option. The conceptual differences between national and EU citizenships are immense. In this article I explore the advantages and disadvantages of possible citizenship templates and propose an ‘EU protected citizen’ status for EU citizens.

Conclusion: towards a humanistic philosophy of the European Union

The present institutional reality in the EU is characterised by two contradictory dynamics; namely, the institutional one, centred on a quest for macroeconomic solutions, more sustainable public expenditures and even the design of a fiscal Union, and the centrifugal one, calling for a ‘palingenesis’, that is, for renegotiated, and more intergovernmental, arrangements. Although this reality gives the impression that there exist more problems than solutions, I shall use the disjunction between ‘the centripetal’ and ‘the centrifugal’ as a point of departure for outlining a humanistic philosophy for the European Union. The EU needs a more inclusive way of appraising where we are and this inclusive way of seeing things cannot be divorced from a humanist axiology. Five guidelines show how structures and policies can contribute to creating, and bettering, the conditions for a more fulfilled and dignified living.

Liberalism and Societal Integration: In Defence of Reciprocity and Constructive Pluralism

Because contemporary polities define themselves as nation-states, the right to participate effectively in the common regulation of the public affairs on equal and fair terms and to have an equal right to the enjoyment of the goods of the commonwealth does not extend to all contributors. The prevailing nationality model of citizenship ensures that official partners in the collective endeavour are only the nationals and those who are willing to ‘integrate’ into the society and to become like nationals via naturalisation. In this article, I reflect on this institutional deficit by critically examining the notion of societal integration and, more particularly, by taking issue with integration tests as prerequisites to naturalisation. I argue that democratic imaginations and institutionalised ways of living together could benefit from calling into question national reciprocity. My argument for its replacement with comprehensive reciprocity and the transformation of the latter into an organising principle of political life in liberal democracies is contained in the final section of the article.

Defending the case for liberal anationalism

Relationships are hardly ever one-dimensional. To insist that they are or to make unqualified judgements about them, be they positive or negative, is more often than not a sign of immaturity. They constantly evolve, may be bumpy at times and can even slip into completely unpredictable directions. Additionally, our perception, appreciation and enjoyment of them are variable; time and space mould as well as scold them. Uncertainty, unpredictability and complexity thus characterise all relationships. Amidst uncertainty and complexity, however, we take solace in some basic facts, such as that they do work and that the unique history they generate gives us a fairly good idea as to what we can reasonably expect from them. If they do not work, are based on false premises and exhibit chaotic and repressive tendencies, then we should opt for disentanglement. This is precisely the argument I wish to make in this paper about a very important relationship that has shaped modern constitutional polities and politics; namely, the relationship between liberalism and nationalism. Although nationalism appears to be so entrenched in political life and discourse, that its illiberal face is often deemed to be an exception and unfortunate coincidence triggered by international terrorism. Alternatively, it may be depicted as the result of ill-thought policies which can be reversible. In this paper, I argue that liberal nationalism is conceptually flawed and politically illiberal. Illiberal tendencies are an integral part of it and these cannot be corrected by ‘taming’ unruly nationalism or by articulating ‘benign’ adaptations of it. Because the liberal and illiberal faces are interwoven in complex ways, my suggestion is to look far ahead and beyond it.

Capricious games of snakes and ladders : the nexus of migration and integration in light of human rights norms

The ‘journey’ to admission, settlement and, eventually, citizenship in Western Europe has become tightly controlled by governmental authorities and ridden with hurdles in the new millennium. Reforms in several EU Member States, such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, the Flemish Community in Belgium and Ireland, require migrants to attend language tuition and civic orientation courses and to take part in integration examinations. Integration programmes and tests have also migrated abroad; they have now become part of a pre-departure phase that commences in home countries for spouses seeking reunification with their loved ones. In this chapter, I examine closely the ‘civic integration script’ and discuss how international human rights law could unsettle its basic premises by bringing forth an alternative normative and policy framework.