Europe has been doing a bit more than trying to tackle this dilemma; it has been running the world’s biggest open-air social-science experiment for the past two decades. In 1993, as a culmination of attempts to forge a united Europe after millennia of war, the EU not only gave birth to itself but it also quietly created—without much discussion of what it would mean—the entirely new concept of European citizenship.
Under the Maastricht Treaty, European citizenship exists “over and above national citizenship. Every citizen who is a national of a member state is also a citizen of the union.” Not everyone in the EU realizes this, but it is true. Citizenship of the EU confers a series of rights, including the unprecedented ability to live and work anywhere in the EU indefinitely. With that comes legal parity with national citizens on everything, bar the right to vote in general elections. [...]
What’s more, the European immigrant doesn’t think of himself as an immigrant. He thinks of himself as a European—equal with the local citizens. This can lead to some very strange moments. In the aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Labour MP Stella Creasy recalled a moment during the campaigning in her London constituency: [...]
Immigrants who do not think of themselves as such don’t really exist in history, because you usually need permission to be in someone else’s country. Before 1708, when Britain passed the Foreign Protestants Naturalization Act (pdf)—to give asylum to French Huguenots fleeing Catholic persecution—a foreigner could become a British citizen only through a private act of Parliament or by petitioning the king. (The concept of “Britishness” was itself fairly new—the union with Scotland had only occurred two years earlier.)
No comments:
Post a Comment