BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM THE CONSTITUTIONAL CITIZEN IN NARRATIVES OF PEOPLEHOOD JOHANNA HASE * TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................................................................................................... 372 The Narrative in The People in Question ............................................................. 373 Changing Constitutional Citizenship without Changing Citizenship Regimes .... 374 The Conceptual and Empirical Limits of Constitutional Citizenship ................... 375 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 376 INTRODUCTION The central contribution that Jo Shaw makes in her impressive The People in Question is the proposition of the concept ‘constitutional citizenship’. 1 She suggests that it encompasses ‘those aspects of the membership relation that go to the very heart of a polity and some of the conditions for its existence’. 2 One of these conditions is a convincing narrative of peoplehood, a story that makes sense of a polity’s past and present, and that projects its future. The characters in such narratives reveal who belongs to ‘the people’ and who does not. 3 From this perspective, the constitutional citizen as ‘a central figure for understanding many dimensions of and tensions within modern citizenship as well for understanding modern constitution-based polities’ 4 can be the main character, even the hero, in narratives of peoplehood in some contexts. Consequently, changes to the overall narrative of peoplehood may imply changes to the character of the constitutional citizen. Building on such a reading of constitutional citizenship, this contribution makes two points: first, it highlights how Shaw’s notion of constitutional citizenship helps to understand the relation between constitutional discourse and citizenship. Second, it questions where the limits of this relation lie and when constitutional discourse is beyond the realm of the constitutional citizen. But to start off, the contribution takes a step back and notes some of the narrative features in Jo Shaw’s fascinating The People in Question itself. * 1 2 3 4 Johanna Hase is a Research Fellow at the Project Group ‘International Citizenship Law’ at the WZB Berlin and an affiliate PhD Student at the Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies. This contribution has received funding from the European Research Council under grant agreement No 716350. Jo Shaw, The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times (Bristol University Press 2020). ibid 57. ibid 26–27; Rogers Smith, Stories of Peoplehood (Cambridge University Press 2003). See Natalie Baird’s contribution about how stateless people per definition do not play a role in such narratives: Natalie Baird, ‘Constitutions, Citizenship and the Shadow of Statelessness’ 2(2) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 377. Shaw (n 1) 44 (emphasis omitted).