Reimagining Citizenship in Postwar Europe

Abstract

Reimagining Citizenship in Postwar Europe maps the generation and growth of novel forms of belonging in the years after World War II, crisscrossing the continent from Madrid to Warsaw and from Athens to London. Even as Europe struggled to rebuild, new forms of identity, statehood, and citizenship were beginning to take shape.

Rachel Chin and Samuel Clowes Huneke bring together a diverse group of scholars to illustrate how citizenship was reimagined in the postwar decades in unusual settings and unexpected ways, while highlighting how ordinary citizens, living in democratic and authoritarian regimes alike, struggled to forge new kinds of belonging through which to assert their human rights and dignity. Ultimately, Reimagining Citizenship in Postwar Europe contends that if we are to grapple with fraying citizenship in the twenty-first century, we must first look to when, how, and why citizenship originated in the calamitous years after World War II.