Constituting European Citizenship | DEMOS21

The American University of Paris welcomes Prof. Sandra Seubert, Goethe University Frankfurt, for a talk entitled "Constituting European Citizenship." This talk is part of the Contemporary European Democratic Theory theme of the DEMOS21 event series organized by the Center for Critical Democracy Studies.

This paper ask how pro-European activism relates to the idea of European citizenship. Its ambition is to evaluate recent mobilisations in light of an activist understanding of citizenship and relate them to a broader dynamic of reframing political space. Despite its ambivalent founding in market integration, EU citizenship as a legal status has a political potential which has hardly been sufficiently discussed. Exploring the performative as well as polity-constituting dimension of enactments of European citizenship, the paper elaborates on the role of narratives and imaginaries of democratic founding that are the basis for political mobilisation. Reflecting on recent attempts to transfer the idea of constituent power to a transnational setting, it suggests a reinterpretation which incorporates the inherent paradoxical dimension of enactment and representation. ‘Constitutive moments’ are sequences of rupture rather than single events, creating narratives of shared past and future, which reach out to construct new commonalities.

Registrants will receive an email, including the event details and the link to join the event, 24 hours prior to the event start time. For late registrations, please email Julian Culp at jculpaup.edu.