Solidarity Decomposed: Being and Time in European Citizenship

Abstract

In this paper, argue that Union citizenship cannot be understood as the elevation of national solidarity, however thinly conceived, to the transnational level. On the contrary, Union citizenship acts on national solidarity, thereby altering its shape. It lends expression to an individualistic view of the political realm. I attempt to explain why owing to the preponderance of this view, national solidarity comes to be perceived as ungenerous and unkind, even in the eyes of its own beneficiaries.