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Exploring an Analogical Citizenship for Europe
Open Citizenship (2014)
  • Pablo Cristóbal Jiménez Lobeira, PhD, The University of Notre Dame Australia
Abstract
The cultural, economic and political crisis affecting the European Union (EU) today is manifested in the political community’s lack of enthusiasm and cohesion. An effort to reverse this situation – foster ‘EU identity’ – was the creation of EU citizenship. Citizenship implies a people and a polity. But EU citizens already belong to national polities. Should EU citizenship override national citizenship or coexist with it? Postnationalists like Habermas have suggested EU citizenship can overcome nationalisms, grounding political belonging on the body of laws that members of the postnational polity generate in the public sphere. Cosmopolitan communitarianists like Bellamy, by contrast, think that EU citizens should form a mixed commonwealth, with political belonging based on national citizenship. I will argue in favour of the second option, and submit an analogical reading of the ensuing ideas of citizenship, identity and polity. Cosmopolitan communitarianist EU citizenship promises to better foster the great richness of European national cultural, religious, historical, political, legal and linguistic diversity in a ‘mixed’ polity. Its main challenge is how to keep the diverse, mixed polity together. 
Keywords
  • analogical language,
  • demos,
  • diversity,
  • EU citizenship,
  • EU identity,
  • postnational,
  • unity
Publication Date
Fall November 20, 2014
Citation Information
Pablo Cristóbal Jiménez Lobeira. "Exploring an Analogical Citizenship for Europe" Open Citizenship Vol. 1 Iss. 1 (2014) p. 28 - 49
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/pablo-jimnezlobeira/9/
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC International License.