The category of the denizen is becoming increasingly important in the identity politics of the EU. EU law and policy over a number of years has encouraged the development of a new hybrid status of the permanent resident who possesses many legal and social rights but lacks full political citizenship. Thinkers and politicians differ over the implications of this development, some seeing it as a temporary status on the way to full citizenship, others seeing it as a permanent sub-citizenship status, and others still seeing it as a way of moving beyond the citizenship/non-citizenship dichotomy in understanding the relationship between individuals and political communities. The paper explores this third alternative at some length, and concludes that the figure of the denizen may indeed be an appropriate archetype for imagining political community at the supranational level.