Community Unionism has served as a pivotal concept in debates on trade union renewal since the early 2000s, yet its theoretical coherence and political significance remain unresolved. This article investigates why CU has gained such prominence – not by testing its efficacy, but by mapping how it is constructed, cited, and contested across the scholarly literature. Using two complementary systematic approaches – a citation network analysis of 114 documents and a thematic review of 18 core CU case...