The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship

Abstract

[EN] This review examines The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, edited by Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Bauböck, Irene Bloemraad and Maarten Vink, situating it within the expanding and highly dynamic field of citizenship studies. It highlights how the volume responds to a context marked by intensified mobility, deepening social inequalities, international migration, security concerns and populist backlash, showing that citizenship is “back with a vengeance.” The review underscores the handbook’s main contribution as a multidisciplinary and comparative roadmap for conceptual, normative and empirical research on citizenship, which explicitly embraces the contested, multi-scalar nature of the concept rather than seeking a single, unified definition. It synthesises the five parts of the book, covering theoretical approaches, membership and rights, national regimes and everyday practices, forms of citizenship beyond the state, and future challenges such as precarious statuses, technology and the marketisation of citizenship. The review stresses the accessibility, breadth and overall balance of the contributions, which speak to students, practitioners and established scholars alike, while formulating two key critical remarks: the absence of a systematic engagement with Roma citizenship, and the limited dialogue with classic work on nationalism, particularly Benedict Anderson, in the chapter on citizenship and the nation-state. Overall, it concludes that the handbook offers an authoritative and up-to-date point of entry into contemporary debates on citizenship and will likely become a central reference for future research.