Citizenship Configurations: Analysing the Multiple Purposes of Citizenship Regimes in Europe

This paper presents an analysis of the multiple purposes of citizenship regimes in 36 states in Europe. Previous studies on this topic suffer from two methodological deficits which lead to a static and biased perspective on how states regulate citizenship status: they emphasise the importance of national membership models and focus nearly exclusively on the access to citizenship for immigrants. To overcome these deficits we develop a citizenship regime typology based on functional components of citizenship laws, focusing on acquisition as well as loss, inside as well as outside the territory of a state. We find that citizenship regimes in Europe configure along two dimensions that can be associated with territorial and ethno-cultural inclusion, which are not only conceptually but also empirically independent of each other. These two dimensions result in four ideal types: territorial and ethno-cultural regimes that are inclusive on only one of these dimensions, expansive regimes that are inclusive on both dimensions and insular regimes that restrict both inclusions.