Migration and Europeanization of Citizenship in Central Europe and the Western Balkans

This paper problematizes Europeanization of citizenship norms and practices in post-communist/ post-partition states. It examines responses to the so called 2015 European migration crisis in CEECs’ (the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and the Western Balkans’ (Croatia and Serbia). Against the backdrop of increased migration into Europe and the EU, we see formation of conflicting citizenship narratives at the level of European institutions and EU member/quasi-member states. Divergence in responses to various enactments of citizenship by migrants are also observable across countries that are often grouped together as the post-communist space. This paper argues that the so called 2015 migration crisis has caused a rupture in the Europeanization of citizenship narratives. This particularly concerns the prevailing narrative that the European dimension dismantles the nation-state and the associated ideologies of nationalism.

Drawing on insights from national and European responses to the so called 2015 migration crisis, this paper makes a plea for shifting the focus to the new or becoming EU states as a source of theorizing and explaining Europeanization in the citizenship domain. Responses of the Czech, Slovak, Croatian and Serbian elites and society to migration flows in 2015 are studied to redefine Europeanization in terms of the West evolving Eastwards (to paraphrase Comaroffs’). In view of the increased demands for re-territorialization of citizenship within the nation-state boundaries in the EU-context, this re-definition of Europeanization seems analytically promising.