The Politics of European Citizenship

In contrast to most books on EU citizenship this book is a page-turner until the end. I found myself varyingly intrigued, annoyed, and challenged. This is what a book should be. It is provocative, almost polemical, and should get noticed. Above all, I believe that there is room-indeed an overwhelming need for-a variety of books on these topics that challenge rather than replicate each other. Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

This volume offers an intriguing, thought-provoking argument, linking the neo-liberalization of many EU policy developments (via the Single European Market and the Lisbon Agenda) to an ever more restrictive conceptualization of 'European citizenship' à la Maastricht... The subfield of EU studies has become so over-specialized that we could really use more texts of this nature linking contradictory policy domains and national vs. supranational currents. Joyce Mushaben, University of Missouri-St.Louis

...the book offers important insights into the contradictions and limits of the current integration project and how these limits might be transcended in order to come to a more veritable realisation of the citizenship ideal within the European Union. Highly recommended for any student of European governance and European political economy. Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Department of Political Science, VU University Amsterdam

As the European Union faces the ongoing challenges of legitimacy, identity, and social cohesion, an understanding of the social purpose and direction of EU citizenship becomes increasingly vital. This book is the first of its kind to map the development of EU citizenship and its relation to various localities of EU governance. From a critical political economy perspective, the authors argue for an integrated analysis of EU citizenship, one that considers the interrelated processes of migration, economic transformation, and social change and the challenges they present.

Peo Hansen is Political Scientist and Associate Professor at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University, Sweden. His publications include Europeans Only? Essays on Identity Politics and the European Union (Umeå University, 2000) and Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma, co-authored with Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Stephen Castles (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Sandy Brian Hager is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto. His research interests and publications have focused on the political economy of welfare restructuring in the European Union, and more recently, on capital theory, global finance, and geopolitics.