Book Review Symposium Introduction
people’. With the example of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Kovács’ shows how
ethnonationalist populist governments use external ethnic citizenship and
preferential naturalisation regimes to ‘reinterpret the concept of citizenship and
make non-residential ethnic citizenship central to their citizenship politics’. 19 She
thereby convincingly underlines Shaw’s argument that populism constitutes a
serious challenge to the idea of constitutional citizenship.
All four contributions highlight how Shaw’s analysis of constitutional
citizenship adds to the ongoing debates and challenges in the fields of citizenship
and statelessness studies. The questions Shaw raises in The People in Question
will certainly inform future discussions about the definition of membership, the
formation of statehood, the ideas of peoplehood and the exclusions from these
concepts in the form of non-citizenship and statelessness.
19
ibid 394.
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