Etienne Balibar's recent interventions have stressed the strategic importance of including the history of colonial expansionism in any critical reflection on the question of European citizenship. This inclusion, not exclusive to academic debating, is a fundamental issue of everyday life in Europe due to the 'increasingly larger and legitimate presence, despite the suffered discriminations, of populations of colonial origins in the old metropolises'.

Reflecting on colonial history then is ridden with 'new tensions and violence' whilst potentially writing what Balibar calls a 'lesson of otherness' into the fibre of European citizenship: the European recognition 'of otherness as an indispensable element of its own identity, its virtuality, its 'power' (Balibar, L'Europe, L'Amerique, la guerre. p. 38).

READ "CITIZENS IN MOTION"

Further reading:

"BORDER, CITIZENSHIP, WAR, CLASS: A DISCUSSION WITH ÉTIENNE BALIBAR AND SANDRO MEZZADRA"

by Manuela Bojadžijev and Isabelle Saint-Saëns, New Formations 58