Citizenship Rights for the Third Country Nationals-European Citizenship or the Liberalization of European Citizenship Regimes

Abstract: This thesis is an attempt to discuss the proposals to improve the statuses and rights of the legally resident third country nationals living in the European Union. As denizens, third country nationals have full civil and social rights but they do not have any political rights. This is believed to denote an anomaly, which can be corrected through the grant of political rights. However, political rights are reserved only for the political community's full members, who are citizens. As the citizenship regimes of most of the member states have been based on the principle of jus sanguinis, which denotes an ethno-cultural and as a result an exclusive citizenship regime, the introduction of European citizenship was celebrated by the migrants? representatives, political activists and academics. The findings of this study show that despite the high hopes, European citizenship can not provide anything for the third country nationals. On the contrary, it seems that it operates as legal and social exclusion mechanisms for them. In line with the developments that have taken place in the European citizenship regimes in the last decade, it seems that only liberalized national citizenship regimes can improve the statuses of the third country nationals.