ENACT briefing and workshop, Brussels, April 2010

ENACT will engage with policy-makers and a range of other key actors in Brussels on 27 April.  A combined briefing and workshop featuring core elements of ENACT research will be preceded by an opening speech by Ms Viviane Hoffmann, Deputy Head of Cabinet for the Vice-President and Commissioner for Justice, Human Rights and Citizenship. 

Reassessing European Citizenship: citizen rights and citizen acts

27th April 2010

Centre for European Policy Studies, CEPS, Brussels

The formal creation of European citizenship in 1993 is often seen as a major achievement of European integration.  At the same time, it is a status that is subject to real pressures.  Access to European citizenship, and the free movement rights which lie at its core, are constrained by varied member state nationality policies and other developments.
Normally, European citizenship is assessed in terms of the European Court of Justice’s interpretations of rights amid such pressures.  This conference offers a new lens – focused on acts of European citizenship – in order to generate new insights.  There is more to European citizenship than status and residence rights.  How do people enact citizenship, mobility, and their rights to ‘Europe’?  Reaching beyond European citizenship as a legal status, the presentations examine a series of acts by subjects who claim European rights, regardless of their status. Major issues about identity, belonging, and the significance of ‘Europe’ are at stake in these claims.  This becomes clear as we explore acts of citizenship, and their challenges to European citizenship, by Turkish groups, Roma and Sinti, and sex workers, along with state acts of depriving citizenship.  Through such cases we are able to illuminate the gap between law and the politics of European citizenship (the focus of the concluding roundtable discussion).

The conference presents key results from ENACT (Enacting European Citizenship), a research project funded by the 7th Framework Research Programme of DG Research of the European Commission and coordinated by The Open University in the UK.

ENACT’s aim is to take part in debates on European citizenship through the analysis of acts of citizenship, bringing into focus a range of actors and acts not normally considered in the context of European citizenship. ENACT highlights ways in which the scope, content and perception of European citizenship is shaped by the complex ways in which citizenship is enacted, within, across and beyond member states. Acts of (European) citizenship influence who we think of as being subjects for rights, and often demonstrate graphically the challenges to instituting citizenship on a transnational scale.  In short, ENACT’s fresh perspective provides a new way to assess the emerging dynamics of European citizenship. For more information about the project refer to: http://enacting-citizenship.eu/

PROGRAMME
09.00 Registration
09.30 Welcome and opening remarks by Elspeth Guild (CEPS), Michael Saward and Jef Huysmans (Open University), Peteris Zilgalvis (DG Research)
10.00 Keynote address: A new perspective on European citizenship
Deputy Head of Cabinet for the Vice-President and Commissioner for Justice, Human Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Hoffmann
10.45 Coffee break
11.00 – 12.00 Enacting European citizenship in Turkey
Fuat Keyman (Koc University)
Chair: Engin Isin (Open University)

12.00 – 13.00 Deprivation of citizenship in the EU
Elspeth Guild and Sandra Mantu (Radboud University)
Chair: Engin Isin

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:00 Mobility, sex workers and European citizenship
Rutvica Andrijasevic and Vicki Squire (Open University)
Julia O’Connell Davidson (University of Nottingham)
Chair: Anaïs Faure Atger (CEPS)

15:00 – 16:00 Challenges to European citizenship: the Roma and Sinti in Italy and Germany
Claudia Aradau (Open University)
Ayse Caglar (Central European University)
Chair: Sergio Carrera (CEPS)

16.00 – 16.15 Coffee break

16:15 – 17:15 Concluding Roundtable Assessing European citizenship: between law and politics
Angela Liberatore (DG Research, European Commission), Elspeth Guild, Engin Isin, Jef Huysmans
Chair: Michael Saward