Medborgarskap inom den Europeiska Unionen - I sökandet efter det rättvisa medlemskapet

Sammanfattning: The membership of individuals in democratic political communities is marked by the status of citizenship. Citizenship entails belonging to a nation-state where rights and obligations are balanced between the state and its citizens. Democratically the nation-state is meant to be inclusive of all the people living on its territory. In the globalised world of today this is challenged by migration, the cross-border movement of people. As more people come to live in countries other than their country of origin, the boundaries and belonging of the political community comes into question. This actualises questions of who should be included and how exclusion of some people can be justified. This thesis aims to give a normative definition of just membership emanating from a cosmopolitan understanding of universal justice and rights of the individual. To explore what validity just membership has today the basic values of just membership are shaped into a norm that can be applied empirically. The European Union is used as the empirical context on which the norm is applied to evaluate in what extent the values of just membership are fulfilled. The study argues that only in certain aspects the norm of just membership is fulfilled within the European Union.