Rethinking EU Citizenship: Towards the Postmodern Ethics of Citizenship

Abstract

The concept of EU citizenship reflects EU politics of (fixed) identity, which guarantees rights only to the homogenous groups (and individuals as representatives of these groups). Hence, it leaves room for marginalizing, othering, excluding and other forms of discrimination, by creating binary oppositions: we/they, citizen/alien, EU/non-EU and so forth. EU citizenship is based on the modernist ethics of priority of right over the good. It is created to promote European idea, so it has only instrumental value. On the other hand, the politics of affinity leads to the substantive EU citizenship founded on multiple identities. The politics of affinity requires a new ethics which will lead to transformation of the main concepts of EU legal discourse.

Keywords

• Europe
• citizenship
• identity
• right