While confronting a certain sense of crisis in the management of immigrant diversity, many European States are opting for a citizen­ship-based policy approach. The current debate suggests that we are facing an important change of direction. The category of citizenship is entering the political agenda of most European states as a policy for managing diversity. This political link was already fuelling academic debates during the two last decades of the 20th century, but now it is crossing the academic realm and entering into that of policy. This shift constitutes the basic framework of this book. European states are using citizenship as a policy response to the multicultural crisis. In accordance with M. Walzer’s (1983) seminal work on distributive justice, states are becoming aware of the fact that citizenship is a primary good for allocating membership to a political community. The re-definition or consolidation of the old institution of citizenship touches on impor­tant normative questions of political membership in diverse societies, as it modifies the relation between national identity and formal politi­cal membership. As for a state’s authority to decide who may enter national territory (the territorial border where migrants become immi­grants), the allocation of citizenship is one of the major bastions of nation-states’ sovereignty in the management of immigration. Citizen­ship is not only a device for sorting out “wanted” and “unwanted” migrants, it also establishes a second gateway that immigrants have to pass through in order to become full members of the polity.

ISBN: 978-84-82511-12-9

177 pp.

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