Trading Citizenship, Human Capital and the European Union

Abstract

The state as a self-determining agent has a clear and well-established interest in structuring ‘access to citizenship’ in ways that support its goals, whether these goals concern economic development, health and social welfare, cultural standing or sporting glory. The legitimacy of the ways in which it pursues these goals is however another question. Practices that support the emergence of transnational class and status stratification in which mobility rights become radically unequally distributed are not compatible with the democratic legitimacy of states or of the EU. States whose policies are pushing to the neoliberal extreme, help bring into focus a wider range of policies that are hollowing out democratic citizenship from within.