Migration and Differentiated Citizenship: on the (Post-)Americanization of Europe

The pluralization of our society goes on, regardless of the French desire to restore the republican roots through the debate concerning the Islamic veil in the schools, regardless of Germany’s attempts to impose a Leitkultur, regardless of the researchers’ reflections around the political issue of what “integration” really means. This pluralization, which is unquestionably not only related to the phenomenon of migration, challenges the European national societies in three different ways. Firstly, by the constant ambivalence between the national identity discourse and the supranational construction of a European State. Secondly, by the internal differentiation of the civil society, which still only recognizes itself as a unity in the (accepted) difference. Thirdly, through the nation-state differentiations of belongings, which partially get disconnected from the territory and honoured through interlaced judicial claims, as shown by the topic of undocumented immigrants’ access to health care. These dynamics of differentiation and of pluralization will here be pointed as “Americanization” of Europe, which is imposing itself “from below”, while awaiting regulation “from above”