Unmaking the past making the future
An intergenerational analysis of ancestral citizenship and visions of Europe
Migration Department
Project head: Dr. Jannes Jacobsen , Dr. Zeynep Yanaşmayan
Project team members: Simona Maue , Long Nguyen , Dr. Jonna Rock
How does the vision of Europe change across generations of citizens? What is the role of European citizenship and ancestry in the constitution of a fair and future-oriented Europe? Since the Maastricht Treaty, there has been a vivid debate whether European citizenship could be seen as the first step of a postnational European identity or whether it is bound to remain a derivative status confined to second-order attachment. In the meantime, not only the EU has expanded towards Central and Eastern Europe but also, the member states have to a great extent maintained their own approach to nationhood, leading to different legal pathways to citizenship for newcomers. These approaches are commonly divided into jus sanguinis and jus soli and the latter is often considered as the guiding principle for a more inclusive form of citizenship, as it prioritizes the place of birth over bloodline.
By turning this expectation on its head, through a mixed-method, multi-level and cross-country comparative design, this project seeks to trace the competing visions of Europe embedded in citizenship acquisitions specifically based on claims of co-ethnicity and bloodline. Studying three EU member states, Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy, that have introduced this legal pathway at different times and with different motivations, we seek to understand its role for the making of future Europe. Ancestral citizenship provisions have been introduced in different European countries with the intention of unmaking the national past, trying to remedy historical mistakes, responding to shifting territorial borders or to the massive emigration that occurred due to economic hardship. Yet, they simultaneously make the future of Europe. While older generations of ancestral citizens may have been more motivated with reconnecting with their birth places, coping with grief and intergenerational trauma, younger generations who were born outside of their ancestral homelands may be more intrigued by the Europeanization of citizenship.
The project analyzes the debates on the founding principles and meanings of ancestral citizenship over time and generations not only in the selected three case studies but also at the EU level. It connects them, on the one hand, to the individual processes of citizenship acquisition and, on the other hand, to the brokers and mediators that facilitate, shape, or reproduce such pathways at the national level. It is crucial to keep our finger on the pulse of intergenerational making of Europe and on the potential to build a future oriented and fair approach towards European citizenship.
Further information can be found here: ace.hypotheses.org
Funding: Volkswagen Foundation (Third-party funding)
Cooperation partner:
Dr. Melissa Blanchard (CNRS- Centre Norbert Elias), Dr. Zeynep Kaşlı (ISS- Erasmus Universität Rotterdam)