Redefining membership: restrictive rights and categorisation in European Union migration policy

This article analyses European Union (EU) policy-making on the rights of third-country nationals (TCN) against the backdrop of theoretical literature on the transformation of citizenship. The aim is to evaluate why and to which extent EU policy expands citizenship rights to TCNs, thus redefining the criteria for membership in the European polity. The research emphasises the role of norms and frames in policy-making and is based on secondary sources, primary documents and semi-structured interviews. The analysis reveals how the combination of a principled conflict over citizenship and a strategic conflict over competence led to a legal framework characterised by ‘restrictive rights’ and ‘politics of categorisation’. ‘Restrictive rights’ means that membership rights are granted to TCN in principle, but subject to very restrictive conditions. ‘The politics of categorisation’ refers to the political construction of migrant categories that are subject to different rights-regimes. Both phenomena have the ambiguous effect of enabling the expansion of rights to non-citizens while at the same time creating new lines of division and mechanisms of exclusion.