174 F. De Witte i­ mmigration (for whatever reason), the only thing that we can do is leave the EU. If the EU doesn’t start to think about how it can internalize and institutionalize contestation of its values, Union citizenship and free movement will indeed be seen as something that divides, that creates winners and losers. Not necessarily because it does create winners and losers, but because its contours and effects are not mediated through a process that can legitimize and explain the outcome. What Union citizenship and free movement do to the state A second theme that has emerged in the discussion is that my account of Union citizenship as ‘anchorless’ and as getting round the ‘ethno-centric’ vision of the nation state, on the one hand, underestimates the virtues of national institutional structures in solidifying inter-personal commitments and general will-formation and, on the other hand, underestimates the power of free movement as an instrument for cosmopolitan justice. These two points – made by Richard Bellamy and Kieran Oberman, respectively – suggest that my argument takes seriously neither the nation state nor cosmopolitanism. Instead, it is precariously perched between these two poles: free movement and non-discriminatory access to welfare benefits for EU migrants, on this account, are parasitical on domestic political commitments and extend them across borders without succeeding in fully disentangling them from the nation state and its structures. In simple terms, it destabilizes the nation state without replacing it with the promise of egalitarian cosmopolitanism. More is lost than gained in the exercise. Richard Bellamy highlights that my argument is premised on the quest to create ‘a fully fledged political and legal cosmopolitanism that looks to the ultimate demise of nation states as a necessary condition for justice’. He suggests that in doing so I misrepresent the state. The modern-day nation state is less exclusionary and more pluralist than I have presented it to be; and it is, crucially, indispensible for the determination, enforcement and stability of sharing practices. On the first point Bellamy is partially right: it is empirically demonstrable that membership to national political communities has never been more inclusive and pluralist. But this has clearly not affected the capacity for exclusionary and ethno-centric political narratives to control the political process – across the EU (and the US). It seems that the more diverse and inclusive our societies have become in terms of their membership, the less sensitive their politics become to diversity and inclusion of those that are not members. More inclusive membership thus does not equate to a pluralist society. On the second point Bellamy is completely right: the nation state remains absolutely indispensible in the determination,