The Open University New Labour’s citizens: activated, empowered,

responsibilized, abandoned? New Labour has paid considerable attention to citizenship. In this paper I explore the different ways in which citizens have been addressed and affected by New Labour policies, concentrating on four processes: activation, empowerment, responsibilization and abandonment. I argue that these different processes are not just the effect of looking at New Labour from different perspectives. Rather they need to be seen as linked in a political and governmental project that seeks to construct the unity of the nation and manage its internal diversity. Key words: citizenship, difference, nation, New Labour Citizenship has been a recurrent concern of the New Labour govern-ments that have spanned the turn of the century. At different points, citizens have been activated, empowered, and made the subjects of ‘responsibilities as well as rights’. They have acquired new legal obligations, been subjected to expanded technologies of surveillance, while some have become the objects of formalized induction into the meaning and status of British citizenship. In this article, I explore some of the different dynamics of the remaking of relationships between state and citizens that can be traced in New Labour’s distinctive enthusiasm for citizenship. As the list above indicates, New Labour’s approach to citizenship has involved more than one process. I will argue that one-dimensional views of New Labour miss its contradictory formation and development as a political project. Here I will highlight four of the dynamics that have appeared central to New Labour’s politics of citizenship: activation, empowerment, responsibilization and abandonment