Civis Sum

Civis Sum

Comparing Integration on the Venue Into Society: Making Sense of Citizenship in Europe with Units of Measure

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Project Abstract

Citizenship is a key mechanism of inclusion. Yet we know little about the impact of migration on political systems in the long run and the dynamics of citizenship in a cross-national and interdisciplinary perspective. Cutting edge today means developing a framework going beyond the complex legal and technical specificities of single countries to see the big picture. The overarching research question of this project is: How long and predictable is the route to citizenship in EU28 (incl. Croatia)? Subprojects address access to territory, legal stay, residency, naturalisation and franchise, mimicking the stages of the journey towards civic integration. The research design combines theory development and a systematic empirical study. Outcome is a unitary framework applied to cross-national comparison in EU28. The framework grasps citizenship by accounting for today’s different models. The core idea is to test the functional correlation between criteria determining access to the status and type of entitlements it consists in. An index measures the length and predictability of the venue into the EU, length depending mainly on the number of requirements (e.g. years of residency) and predictability on the number of situations allowing administrations to apply discretionary measures. Do countries having low requirements for naturalisation erect obstacles on other segments of the route? The project looks at a broad set of legal provisions, relating previously unconnected strands of research, by viewing migration as a passage towards enfranchised citizenship: this is how the road to living under democratic rule of law frequently looks for those making the journey. The index aims to give an accurate picture of migration routes in EU28. The project launches a high quality multi-disciplinary research group, develops analytical tools and new theory, establishing comparative citizenship studies as a new field at the crossroads of social, political and legal science.