Who Gets In?

Before anyone began to reflect more deeply on the relationship between citizenship and immigration, Rogers Brubaker, the pioneer in this field of study, established in his book Citizenship and Nationality in France and Germany a paradox particular to the idea (outwardly universal) of citizenship: the paradox of internal inclusion and external exclusion. Citizenship is inclusive, because it offers every individual who belongs to a given nation-state the status of equal membership in that state. But it is also exclusive, in so far as it authorizes nation-states to reproduce themselves by restricting the spillover of individuals between states. Since Brubaker, many authors have reproduced his thesis, with the result that these two aspects of citizenship are seen as two sides of the same conceptual coin.

A recent decision by the European Court of Justice—one likely to have widespread repercussions—suggests that we will henceforth have to think about citizenship...