61 PART II Constitutional Citizenship Unpacked In a classic contribution to understanding citizenship, Verena Stolcke (1997, 61) argued that: Of the three constitutive elements of the modern state, a territory, a government, a people, circumscribing the “people” proved to be the most controversial issue…. A territory without a people, a government without a clearly bounded community to be governed, makes no sense. Hence, bounding the citizenry, that is determining the conditions for becoming a member of a state, acquired a logic of its own as a
181 6 The Populist Challenge to Constitutional Citizenship: The Closing of Discursive Space Introduction This chapter presents reflections on how constitutional citizenship is challenged by the practice of populist politics. It includes, among other examples, a short exposition of the remarkable explosion of populist politics in the UK, its move from the fringes to the mainstream and its impact on issues of citizenship, in particular in the context of the referendum on leaving the EU. This discussion is framed by further case studies focused on Canada
35 2 What Is Constitutional Citizenship and How Can We Study It? Introduction Throughout Chapter 1, I placed inverted commas around the terms ‘constitutional citizen’ and ‘constitutional citizenship’, in order to suggest that they are terms of art requiring further definition and specification in the particular context in which I am using them. Rainer Forst (2014) has argued that citizenship is a ‘normatively dependent concept’ in the sense that its full meaning only emerges through context and usage and by reference to other principles and concepts
At a time of rising populism and debate about immigration, leading legal academic Jo Shaw sets out to review interactions between constitutions and constructs of citizenship.
This incisive appraisal is the first sustained treatment of the relationship between citizenship and constitutional law in a comparative and transnational perspective.
Drawing on examples from around the world, it assesses how countries’ legal, political and cultural processes help to determine the boundaries of citizenship.
For students and academics across political, social and international disciplines, Shaw offers an accessible response to some of the most pressing international questions of our age.
citizenship constellations has not yet been widely used for the empirical study of interactions between citizenship regimes in regions of the world beyond Europe. For all these reasons, I will not try to identify any single all-encompassing analytical frame for understanding ‘shifting spatialities’, although I will use the terms ‘transnational citizenship’ and ‘citizenship constellations’ where appropriate in what follows. The aim of this discussion is to figure out what meaning there is to the concept of constitutional citizenship in the scenario of citizenship and
254 It has not been my primary intention at any point to impose my own view about what citizenship ought to encompass and how it should be dealt with by constitutions, about who ought to belong and who ought not, or about who should determine the answers to questions such as these. But in order to pursue my project, I have had to develop and apply concepts that are not somehow innocent bystanders in the world, such as the idea of ‘constitutional citizenship’. This combination of constitutions and citizenship (two contested concepts) is itself also a
63 3 Picking out the People: Ideals and Identities in the Citizenship/ Constitution Relation Introduction The idea of constitutional citizenship demonstrates how a concept of membership can ‘sit’ within state polities, all of which possess some form of written or unwritten, documentary or dispersed, constitution, constitutional law and constitutional principles. Since constitutions often articulate the distinctive ‘ideals’ of the state, this seems to be a good starting point for a mapping of how citizenship and constitutions/ constitutional law interact. To
globalization and other ‘beyond the state’ dynamics. These challenges highlight a variety of different ways in which the state-based model of constitutional citizenship has been put under pressure. Populism is a style of politics that can operate to close down the discursive space within which citizens can operate as free and equal political agents. It can be said to eat away at those elements of the citizenship/constitutional law interaction that emphasize citizenship as a universal status, as a result of the populists’ appropriation of the notion of ‘the people’. It
The book explores tensions in the relationship between citizenship and constitutions. It starts from the proposition that the citizen is a central figure in most if not all constitutional set-ups at the state level, and then highlights the paradox that in many constitutions matters of citizenship are not regulated in detail. The idea of the ‘constitutional citizen’ is developed and explored in Part Two, across chapters looking at the ideal of citizenship, modes of acquisition and loss of citizenship, and citizenship rights. Two themes emerge in those central chapters: the potential role of superordinate constitutional principles such as equality and dignity in filling out the concept of constitutional citizenship and the question as to how states should determine the boundaries of citizenship. Should it be via the constitution as interpreted by courts, or via the legislature as representing the people? Part Three of the book explores some of the challenges which the idea of constitutional citizenship faces today. It looks at the effects of the rise of populist politics in many countries, including the acceleration in some countries of constitutional amendments to mirror an exclusivist concept of the people. Then it turns to the fragmentation of the governance of citizenship. Here we see a turn away from an exclusive focus on the state and an increased impact of international institutions on citizenship. An exploration of the paradox of the simultaneous rise of populism and globalisation forms the centrepiece of the book’s conclusions.
3 1 Introduction CITIZEN: A member of a free city or jural society, (civitas) possessing all the rights and privileges which can be enjoyed by any person under its constitution and government, and subject to the corresponding duties. (Black 2004 [1891], 206)1 Why constitutional citizenship? It has become rather fashionable to express negative views about citizenship and not to hold it in high regard. If states can put their citizenship on the market in return for what, to high net worth individuals, probably seems like only a relatively small charge or
