Super-foreigners and Sub-citizens: Mapping Ethno-national Hierarchies of Foreignness and Citizenship in Europe

From the viewpoint of the state, a person is either a citizen or a foreigner. National citizenship laws divide people into citizens and foreigners. But citizenship laws also differentiate between categories of citizens and foreigners by granting certain foreigners (super-foreigners) preferential admission to citizenship and by restricting citizenship rights and privileges to certain citizens (sub-citizens). This article analyses comparatively current legal rules on the acquisition and loss of citizenship and on the exercise of citizenship privileges in 38 European countries in order to map ethno-national hierarchies of foreignness and citizenship. It builds a typology of ethno-national rules of citizenship and challenges widely held theses about the liberalisation and de-ethnicisation of citizenship regimes in Europe.