Brexit is a personal concern for EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living in the EU. They fear their rights will become bargaining chips in the negotiations. This article makes an inventory of what would happen without withdrawal agreement, and looks at the possibilities for securing residence and social security rights post Brexit based on current EU, international and national law. It takes into account how actors other than the negotiating parties might press for guarantees outside the negotiating framework. The article concludes that personal concerns are justified. However, Brexit also inspires non-state actors to secure rights and their activities go beyond the occasional lobbying for a particular outcome in the negotiation process.

The increasing mobility of athletes prompts a reconsideration of the presumed connection between allegiance, identity and nationality. Olympic citizenship challenges traditional understandings of community membership by calling into question the privileged status of birthright citizenship and by bringing forth a different, more fluid and changeable notion of belonging. By juxtaposing the ‘old’ world of nations competing via ‘their’ athletes, as momentary representatives of the nation, for glory, medals, dominance and prestige, to the increasing mobility of sportspersons engaging in the pursuit of athletic excellence and creative self-expression, we argue that neither the enactment of tighter rules to prevent ‘citizenship shopping’ nor the transformation of the Olympic Games into athletes' Olympics are desirable reforms. Instead, we propose a participatory growth model which would allow athletes to choose the country they intend to represent following their enmeshment into a localised web of socio-economic interactions and a flexible framework of citizenship. This cannot but have wider implications for the Olympic Charter and for politics in general.

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The EU grants rights to third-country nationals (TCNs) and strives to approximate their rights to those of Union citizens. Up to now, the approximation has extended to social and economic matters. This article investigates whether political rights, notably voting rights for the European Parliament (EP), should also be approximated. To this end, the analysis applies Dahl's democratic principles of 'coercion' and 'all affected interests' as well as Bauböck's principle of 'stakeholding' to the position of TCNs in the EU. Against that background, it explores the relevance of arguments for and against granting TCNs the right to vote in European elections and submits that voting rights should be granted to long-term resident TCNs. The author then proposes including TCN voting rights in the legal framework for EP elections and concludes by suggesting the use of the concept of civic citizenship to express political approximation of TCNs to EU citizens.

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