Citizenship, Civil Society and Transnational Participation: Muslims in Europe

Prof. Riva Kastoryano is a research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Paris. Her work focuses on identity and minority issues, specifically in France, Germany and the United States. She was a lecturer at Harvard University from 1984 to 1987, and has been teaching at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris (Sciences Po.) since 1988 and at the New School for Social Research since 2005.

Her most recent publication is Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany (Princeton University Press, 2002). She also edited Quelle identité pour l’Europe? Le multiculturalisme à l’épreuve (2nd ed., Presses de Sciences-Po, 2005); Nationalismes en mutation en Méditerranée Orientale (Changing Concept of Nationalism) (coauthored with A. Dieckhoff, Ed.du CNRS, 2002); and Les codes de la différence Race-Origine-Religion France-Allemagne-Etats-Unis (Codes of Otherness: Religion, Ancestor and Race in France, Germany and the United States) (Presses de Sciences-Po, 2005). Her new research focuses on nationalism without territory.

The concept of citizenship embodies values and action, “responsibility and civic virtues”, according to Kymlicka and Norman [1]. It cannot, therefore, be limited to political status and rights related to a national identity. Citizenship is also an identity that is developed through the direct or indirect participation of individuals and groups, immigrants or not, to promote a shared interest. It is expressed through the engagement of an individual for the common good either within a voluntary association that is recognized by public authorities or through community activities (local, or broader cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious); in short, through a commitment to civil society as well as to the political community. Therefore, the practice of citizenship within a cultural, ethnic or religious community, as well as within the national community, goes beyond its legal definition. Such multiple identifications and allegiances that result from political participation raise the question of belonging and of the loyalty of an individual to the national community to such an extent that it has even becomes a source of “suspicion” for nation-states, which surfaces in every discussion or public debate on citizenship and nationhood. As a matter of fact, since the 1980s, the scope of the debates on citizenship related to immigration has certainly been an indication of the apprehension of the political class and of the public opinion that citizenship has been depreciated or “desacralized”, which is based on the argument that the “immigrant” or “foreigner” expresses his or her attachment to the country of origin and, therefore, to “primordial ties” with a transposed cultural community, local, national and transnational. Such an understanding of citizenship raises the question of the relevance of the triple link between citizenship, nationality and identity; hence the link between political community and cultural community, the former as a source of rights and legitimacy, and the latter as a source of identity. At the European level, the construction of a new political space creates an opportunity for action beyond boundaries, which leads to transnational structures of representation and to new negotiations with states – home and host – and introduces the question of territoriality with regard to the practice of citizenship and its relation to nationhood.

[1] W.Kymlicka and W. Norman, “Return of the Citizen: A Survey on Recent Work on Citizenship Theory”, Ethics, January 1994, pp.352-381.

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