This paper examines the nascent citizenship regime in Kosovo since the country's declaration of independence in 2008. It argues that the defining characteristics of the Kosovan citizenship are: (i) adoption of the "new-state" model (i.e. inclusion into its citizenship of all Kosovo residents); (ii) tension between civic and multicultural conceptions of citizenship on the one side, and ethnonational conceptions on the other; (iii) contested nature and overlapping jurisdictions. In addition, it claims that the present legal, political and territorial dispute in Kosovo seriously undermines the consolidation of Kosovo's citizenship regime and has turned Kosovo into a territory of de facto shared sovereignties (condominium-like constellations).

This paper looks at the case of citizenship in Kosovo and argues that the mismatch between the idea of a 'liberal' state and the practice of group differentiation, on the one hand, and the socio-political reality that emerged in the post-war period, on the other, has resulted in a citizenship regime that is hierarchical. It aims to demonstrate how despite the legally enshrined promise of equality, differentiated citizenship, together with a political context defined by an ethnic divide and past structural inequalities, as well as uneven external citizenship opportunities, contributed to the emergence of hierarchical citizenship, in which some groups (communities), or 'rights-and-duty-bearing units', are more equal than the others.

Through a comparative analysis of two contested states-Kosovo and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the paper analyses the impact of internal and/or external statehood contestation on the scope of citizenship rights. It does so by introducing the concept of liminality in the study of citizenship in contested states. It contends that while the negative impact of contested statehood on citizenship rights is inevitable, the degree of impediment depends on the nature and level of contestation of statehood, the wider (regional) citizenship constellations, and on the ability of contested states to use different strategies to overcome sovereignty deficits.

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This paper depicts the interplay of religion and politics, as well as of external and internal actors among Albanian communities in Kosovo and Macedonia. It argues that Islam has never been allowed into the political space, despite occasional attempts to politicise it and utilise it for political and nationalist expediency. This relative absence of Islam from the political sphere is due to a specific social and political context, as well as to a specific historical experience. However, one can depict a higher presence of Islam among Albanians in Macedonia, for reasons related to their position as a minority within an Orthodox majority country that is undergoing a process of reaffirmation of religion as an essential pillar of an emerging Macedonian national identity.