Abstract:

Immigrants, who are called as the third country nationals within the framework of the European Union, have become permanent elements of the European societies. They have legal residence permits, by the help of which they have been able to acquire full social and civil rights. However, they do not have any political rights. No democratic society can accept the exclusion of more than 17 million people from the political system as normal. Having thought that the European citizenship might correct this anomaly by giving some political rights to the third country nationals, migrants‟ representatives and academics celebrated its inauguration. However, as this study shows, the European Citizenship not only failed to bring political rights for the third country nationals, but also it deteriorated their conditions by operating as legal and social exclusion mechanisms for them

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