Contemporary Practices of National Identification

Ceremonies for new citizens are organised in different European countries since the early 2000s. These new practices illustrate a political decision to solemnize admission in the “national community” and materialise a contemporary “imagined community”. Comparing the legislative and administrative evolutions of integration and citizenship policy in France, Germany and the United Kingdom,we observe contemporary representations and practices of national identification, and stress possible processes of convergence in the definition of identity and alterity which question the idea of national “models”.