This  chapter makes use of the lenses of citizenship to explore the interaction between the two dimensions of ‘troubled membership’. It locates legal change in its broader political context and focuses on contested boundaries of polity membership. This explores the content of a possible future Scottish citizenship, and examines the formal legal membership and political citizenship in respect of both the Scottish referendum and the UK’s referendum on EU membership.

The UK is the rare country that acknowledges the possibility of its own division. Great Britain's acquiescence  made Scottish secession possible.  The pathways of Scottish secession have been an insular affair, a function of particularly British law and politics, in which international law played little role. 

This paper discusses Scotland’s relationship with the EU in the context of two different secession events. The first concerns the question of an independent Scotland’s EU membership in the event of Scotland’s secession from the UK. The second discusses the position of Scotland in the context of a UK in-out referendum on EU membership. This chapter concludes that in neither case should Scotland be forced to leave the EU against its will.

The right of the people of Scotland to determine the form of government best suited to their needs has been consistently accepted for decades across the political spectrum, and is powerfully demonstrated by Scotland's recent history.