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In much of the citizenship literature it is often considered, if not simply assumed, that citizenship is integral to the character of a self-determining community and that this process, by definition, involves the exclusion of resident 'foreigners'. Dora Kostakopoulou calls this assumption into question, arguing that 'aliens' are by definition outside the bounds of the community by virtue of a circular reasoning which takes for granted the existence of bounded national communities, and that this process of collective self-definition is deeply political and historically dated. Although national citizenship has enjoyed a privileged position in both theory and practice, its remarkable elasticity has reached its limit, thereby making it more important to find an alternative model. Kostakopoulou develops a new institutional framework for anational citizenship, which can be grafted onto the existing state system, defends it against objections and proposes institutional reform based on an innovative approach to citizenship.

:  EU citizenship has matured as an institution, owing to a number of important interventions by the European Court of Justice and legislative initiatives, such as the Citizenship Directive 2004/38/EC, which has recently entered into force. In this article, I critically examine minimalist and cosmopolitan conceptions of European citizenship and argue that once we dispense with the preoccupation of assigning primacy to a specific level of citizenship and establishing some kind of hierarchy among them, we can begin to address the questions and issues that really matter. Among these are the future governance of citizenship and the design of a more inclusive, multilayered and multicultural conception of citizenship. European citizenship entails a number of fruitful ideas for a more ambitious transition to a post‐national tableau and can be the prototype for institutional experimentation on citizenship on a global scale.

Recent legislation on migration and citizenship in Europe and the EU framework on integration require migrants to meet integration requirements in order to enter, reside, reunite with their families and naturalise in the host country. Mandatory language course attendance and examination tests are viewed as means of enhancing integration, which is now framed as a'two way'process or a contractual agreement between migrants and the host society. Despite the deployment of the notion of a contract, integration is, in reality, a one way process aimed at procuring conformity, discipline and migration control. Civic integration rests on an arti¢cial homogenisation and displays the same elements of paternalism and ethnocentricity that characterised past initiatives. The civic integration paradigm is a crucial feature of a renewed, albeit old-fashioned, nationpolitics used by political elites to provide answers to a wide range of issues and to elicit support for a controlling state in the ¢rst decade of the 21 st century.

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