Reviews: Migration and Citizenship. Legal Status, Rights and Political Participation

The aim of the study is not to avail research questions to students looking for an interesting subject for a final thesis (although it may come in handy). It rather provides a research agenda for IMISCOE’s Research Cluster on Migration and Citizenship: legal status, mobilisation and political participation of which editor Rainer Bauböck is the coordinator. IMISCOE is a Network of Excellence funded by the EU 6th framework programme. The Network has implemented a multidisciplinary and comparative research programme on migration, integration and social cohesion, with Europe as its central focus (www.imiscoe.com). Bauböck, who has written the first chapter, holds a chair in social and political theory at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute in Florance (It.) In 2007 he accomplished together with Eva Ersbøll, Kees Groenendijk, Harald Waldrauch and a large team of researchers a large comparative research in 15 EU member states resulting in two thick volumes Acquisition and Loss of Nationality (AUP). This research project was in a sense what was called for in the 2006 research agenda Migration and Citizenship. The other contributors in Migration and Citizenship are Albert Kraler, political scientist at the ICMPD in Vienna with a chapter on the legal status of immigrants and their access to nationality. Bernhard Perchinig, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, has a chapter on EU citizenship and the status of third country nationals. The final chapter deals with political participation, mobilisation and representation of immigrants and their offspring in Europe and is written by Marco Martiniello, Director of the Centre d’Etude de l’Ethnicité et des Migrations at the University of Liège. He is a leading expert in the aspects of integration of migrants into European society. The authors are all high standing political scientists. Other researchers have contributed by presenting actual research results in text boxes, which are integrated in the theoretical chapters, this gives the book a lively structure.