The status of the citizen has recently entered the Greek political and academic agenda as a matter of citizenship. The legislative reform of 2010 marked a strategic reorientation of the Greek Citizenship Code. However, regardless of the legislative change in Greece, the study of citizenship has long been recognized as a continuous political and research challenge in Europe. An interdisciplinary approach to citizenship based on different historical experiences of political participation and exclusion, combined with the emergence of the contemporary problematic of citizenship as an element of immigrant integration, formed the theme of the international conference co-organized by the postgraduate programs of the Department of Political Science and History of the Panteion University and the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of Athens, in collaboration with the Goethe Institute in Athens on October 15-16, 2010. This volume includes edited proceedings of most of the conference presentations and some additional texts.

The book is divided into four sections. The first part, Citizenship in Europe: Acquisition and Loss, aims to introduce the reader to the contemporary European problematic in two ways. Firstly, through a comparative presentation of the practices of acquiring and losing citizenship according to national legislative traditions and administrative practices of member states, and secondly, by referring to the citizenship of the European Union itself as a subsidiary status alongside the nationalities of member states. The second part, History and Context of Greek Citizenship, focuses on our own country. Understanding the contemporary context of citizenship in Greece requires grounding in the past and delving into the historical legacy. The texts of the third part, Comparative Approaches, comparatively examine the political dimensions of mechanisms for granting and depriving citizenship. The fourth part, Citizenship between Rights and Exclusions, refers to the discourse that defines citizenship and the reasons that utilize or reproduce this definition, establishing and legitimizing social distinctions.