How Citizenship Divides: A Response to Loic Azoulai

Abstract

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(1), 283-286 | Dialogue | (Abstract) This note is a brief response to Professor Azoulai's reaction (On Dubious Parallels: The Transnational Europeans and the Jews. A Note on Gareth Davies' Article, in European Papers, Vol. 5, 2020, No 1, forthcoming, www.europeanpapers.eu) to my Article, How Citizenship Divides (How Citizenship Divides: The New Legal Class of Transnational Europeans, in European Papers, Vol. 4, 2019, No 3, www.europeanpapers.eu, p. 675 et seq.). He takes exception to my suggestion that Jews in early 20th century Europe, like mobile Union Citizens, were in a sense outsiders within the states that were their homes, and as members of a pan-European persecuted minority, also in a sense transnational. He seems to think that to suggest a minority may have a different sense of place and belonging in their state is to insult them. I think that to deny it is to deny them a voice and identity, as well as to reinforce the nationalist idea that the only good citizen is an uncomplicated one.

Keywords

• union citizenship
• jews in europe
• judaism
• minority identities
• cosmopolitanism
• european union