This paper explores the viability of the UK as a union state. It considers Scottish, UK, and EU citizenship.
This chapter makes use of the lenses of citizenship to explore the interaction between the two dimensions of ‘troubled membership’. It applies a law-and-politics approach, which locates legal change in its broader political context and focuses on the contestation of the boundaries of polity membership. After setting the scene (Section 2), the chapter explores the content of a possible future Scottish citizenship regime (Section 3) and then examines the intertwining of formal legal membership and political citizenship in respect of both the Scottish referendum and the UK’s referendum on EU membership (Section 4). The threads are drawn together in the conclusions (Section 5) through a discussion of how the EU referendum outcomes may impact upon the issue at the heart of the Scottish referendum debate, namely the ongoing viability of the UK as a union state.
In the book: C. Closa (ed.), Secession from a Member State and Withdrawal from the European Union: Troubled Membership, Cambridge University Press, 2016, Forthcoming, Edinburgh School of Law Research Paper No. 2016/05, Europa Working Paper No 2016/03,