BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM CITIZENSHIP, CONSTITUTIONS AND PEOPLES ON THE MARGINS JULIJA SARDELIĆ * It was a pleasure to read Jo Shaw’s new thought-provoking book entitled The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times 1 and it is a privilege to be in dialogue with her ground-breaking work in this symposium. This comment will be focusing on the book’s key concepts from a particular angle: it discusses citizenship, constitutions and ‘the people’ from the perspective of ‘the margins’. The aim is to understand what Shaw’s contemplation on the relations between these concepts could mean for marginalised minorities, who might (or might not) be citizens in Europe and around the globe. While these comments can be placed in the domain of socio-legal analysis (such as Shaw’s book itself), they lean towards the ‘socio’ side of analysis, given that they are written by a political sociologist. I would like to begin this comment with two illustrative examples that, in my view, fit very well within Shaw’s two overarching arguments on constitutional citizens and the (re-)constitution of the people in the turbulent times of the last decade. The first example touches upon the position of Romani minorities in Slovenia and their access to rights as citizens. Slovenia, which has often been cited as a ‘wunderkind’ of post-socialist transition, has amended the Slovenian Constitution in 2016 to include an article against privatisation of water sources and to ensure ‘the right to drinking water’ for the entire population of Slovenia: Everyone has the right to drinking water. Water resources shall be a public good managed by the state. As a priority and in a sustainable manner, water resources shall be used to supply the population with drinking water and water for household use and in this respect shall not be a market commodity. The supply of the population with drinking water and water for household use shall be ensured by the state directly through self-governing local communities and on a not-for-profit basis. 2 The first questions that might appear in this regard concern what is meant by everyone in the Slovenian Constitution: is it only in reference to citizens? Can the * 1 2 Dr Julija Sardelić is a Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington where she (co-)teaches courses on human rights, politics of (migration) and nationalism. Her research is within the scope of citizenship and migration studies and she focuses on the position of marginalised minorities (Roma in particular) and forced migrants as citizens. Before her current post, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leuven (Belgium), Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Liverpool (United Kingdom), Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her book entitled The Fringes of Citizenship: Romani Minorities in Europe and Civic Marginalization will be published in 2021 with Manchester University Press. Jo Shaw, The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times (Bristol University Press 2020). Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No 33/91-I, 42/97, 66/2000, 24/03, 69/04, 68/06, 47/13 and 75/16 (Slovenia) art 70a.