EU citizenship: Still a Fundamental Status? 5 who remain in their member state of origin. At that point, EU citizenship could be said to be moving much closer to being a recognisable variant, at the supranational level, of the classic national model of membership as a status and as a reference point around which citizens can cohere, even if it is not (yet) recognised in international law as a form of ‘nationality’. In order to achieve this transformation it would, however, have to be no longer just a ‘citizenship of mobiles’. Only then could it also become the vehicle for a wider sense of citizen mobilisation. Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation in EU citizenship It will already be evident that many of the concepts I have tossed around in these short paragraphs are contested and hardly have stable meanings. This complicates considerably the task of reinterpreting EU citizenship, whether constitutionally or politically. The concept of EU citizenship needs to be understood in the context of both citizenship theory and integration theory. Our interpretation of the distinctive features of EU citizenship requires a combination of the analytical frames offered by both citizenship studies and European Union studies. It is only by this means that we can construct a historically and contextually sensitive interpretation of this evolving and contested concept. To put it another way, EU citizenship is a product not only of a hesitant process of polity-building beyond the state but also of a move away from a predominantly state-centred conception of citizenship. It relies equally on rethinking ideas about ‘integration’ and on rethinking citizenship as a relational concept and not a fixed structure,7 combining both plural and multi-level institutional elements and also the bottom-up practices of citizens as legal and political actors in a non-state context. Rethinking integration in turn requires acknowledgement that the story of the EU is not one of linear progress towards ‘an ever closer union’, even though it is quite common still for EU citizenship to be lauded as somehow embodying this historic mission. The better view, however, is to recognise that there is no unidirectional process of Europeanisation in which the elements and constraints generated by EU citizenship are simply downloaded onto national citizenship regimes, with alterations to policies and institutions made accordingly.8 In fact, uncovering and analysing the narrative of EU 7 8 See Wiesner, C. et al. (2018), ‘Introduction: Shaping Citizenship as a Political Concept’, in C. Wiesner et al. (eds.), Shaping Citizenship, 1–17 (10). New York: Routledge. For an extended analysis in these terms see Thym, D. (ed.) (2017), Questioning EU citizenship. Judges and the limits of free movement and solidarity in the EU. Oxford: Hart Publishing.