Mobile pensioners: retirement migrants’ perspectives of EU citizenship and free movement

The European institutions picture EU citizens as important actors in the process of transforming EU citizenship into a “tangible reality”. By knowing and practising EU citizenship rights, EU citizens are supposed to give meaning and depth to the otherwise hollow concept of EU citizenship. What EU citizenship means for mobile citizens themselves and how EU citizens practice and evaluate their rights (“lived citizenship”) is generally not a central theme in reports and studies on EU citizenship. In this article the value of EU citizenship will be discussed by applying a qualitative research approach and by focusing on retired EU citizens’ perspectives and practice of, in particular, free movement. This article applies a comparative approach and includes EU citizens who move or return from the Netherlands to Spain or Turkey after retirement. Four groups of EU citizens move between these countries: Dutch nationals who move to Spain, Spanish nationals who return to Spain, Dutch nationals who move to Turkey and Turkish dual-nationals who return to Turkey after retirement. This article shows that migratory background, country of origin, country of retirement and the way in which EU citizenship is acquired determine retirement migrants’ perspectives and practice of EU citizenship.     

Deserving citizenship? Exploring migrants' experiences of the ‘citizenship test’ process in the United Kingdom

Since the early 2000s several European countries have introduced language and citizenship tests as new requirements for access to long‐term residence or naturalization. The content of citizenship tests has been often presented as exclusionary in nature, in particular as it is based on the idea that access to citizenship has to be ‘deserved’. In this paper, we aim to explore the citizenship tests ‘from below’, through the focus on the experience of migrants who prepare and take the ‘Life in the UK’ test, and with particular reference to how they relate to the idea of ‘deservingness’. Through a set of in‐depth interviews with migrants in two different cities (Leicester and London), we show that many of them use narratives in which they distinguish between the ‘deserving citizens’ and the ‘undeserving Others’ when they reflect upon their experience of becoming citizens. In so doing, they negotiate new hierarchies of inclusion into and exclusion from citizenship, which reflect broader neo‐liberal and ethos‐based conceptions of citizenship.     

Migration,Diaspora and Citizenship: A Qualitative Study of the Perceptions of Pakistani Nationals towards the Political Rights of Pakistani Dual Citizens

The dual citizenship has been the subject of intense political debate in Pakistan barring the elected representatives, in parliament, the provincial assemblies and the presidency, from holding dual nationality. The perceptions that holding a foreign citizenship challenges the undiluted loyalty to country further engender question mark over their political participation in country’s affairs. A qualitative study has been carried out in the city of Rawalpindi to explore the stance of Pakistani nationals on such exclusion of Pakistani dual citizens from mainstream politics of Pakistan asking should the individual’s association to the state be an exclusive one? In this paper, in‐depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 40 male and female respondents (22 Pakistani citizens, 18 Pakistani dual citizens) and 6 constitutional experts. The results indicate distrust among Pakistani citizens when considering dual citizens’ right of representation in general elections of Pakistan, stemming from a mistrust of their “split loyalties”.     

Variation in Dual Citizenship Policies in the Countries of the EU

While the concept of citizenship has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years, few studies focus on the increasingly prevalent reality of dual citizenship, or full membership – with its respective rights, privileges, and obligations – in two different countries. The main objective of this article is to conceptualize, measure, and classify variation in dual citizenship in the countries of the European Union. I start by recounting the historical opposition to dual citizenship and by describing its emergence in recent decades. I then develop a “Citizenshi Policy Index” that accounts for some of the intricacies associated with citizenship policies in general and dual citizenship policies in particular. I go on to apply these measures to the fifteen “older” EU countries in both the 1980s and the contemporary period – thus allowing for an analsis of the changes that have taken place over the past two decades members. Overall, the findings point to surprisingly resilient national differences that stand out in contrast to the EU's institutional “harmonization” in so many other areas.     

Commentary: A Citizenship without Social Rights? EU Freedom of Movement and Changing Access to Welfare Rights

Despite not being grounded in the classic nation-building dynamic of citizenship identified by T.H.Marshall, EU citizenship offers social rights and welfare protection to non-nationals on a principle of non-discrimination. We narrate a creeping process of retrenchment by which European member states have used policy strategies to undermine this principle, by transforming the unique idea of free movement of persons in the EU to just another form of “immigration” which can be subject to selectivity and exclusion. As Europe’s multiple recent crises have unfolded, political resources were found to effect this transformation tangibly via reshaping access to welfare for EU citizens. Focusing on the cases of the UK and Germany, we discuss how, despite their distinctive welfare regimes and labour market systems, these two countries have led the way toward a dismantling of non-discrimination for EU citizens and effectively the end of the anomalous ‘post-national’ dimension of European citizenship.     

The Citizenship Gap in European Societies: Conceptualizing,Measuring and Comparing ‘Migration Neutrality’ across the EU

Equality in life‐chances of nationals and immigrants is a sensitive issue on which there is more debate than systematic evidence. To evaluate this condition across European societies, the concept of integration as “migration neutrality” is introduced. “Migration neutrality” is defined as the irrelevance of national citizenship as a predictor of key social attainments. Odds ratios are used to measure the relative risk of non‐national as compared with national citizens in the attainment of relevant resources. While this indicator cannot control for compositional differences in the populations at stake, it represents a straightforward benchmark that can be used in different domains to describe and compare foreign citizens’ position relative to nationals. In this article, we calculate it across EU member states through Eurostat data. In particular, the focus is on migration neutrality in the risk of social exclusion. Country variations are found to be hardly amenable to established classifications of integration types. Moreover, the relationship between “migration neutrality” levels and pro‐immigrant policies (as measured by the Mipex index) is found to be weak, suggesting that these policies do not consistently target the reduction of the gap between nationals and non nationals.     

The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa

In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions. As has been the case in other post-authoritarian and postcolonial settings, the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up. This article interrogates the assumption that media are central to citizens’ political and civic engagements in a transitional society marked by persisting inequalities. This interrogation draws on empirical research with citizens to investigate the question that the media are central to constructions of citizenship and participation and engagement with democratic processes. Our research finds that young South Africans interviewed are disengaged from politics and find that the media does not speak to or connect with their everyday lives. They view the state on both national and local levels as not being prepared to listen to their experiences, ideas or conditions of life. While the respondents trust the media as credible institutions, they do not experience the media as being relevant to their lives. The perceived disinterest of the state and the lack of relevance of the media, work together to create a sense of powerlessness and inability to influence policy-making among the young people interviewed. For the media to intervene in this state of affairs, it would have to create more opportunities for young people to participate directly in meaning production through the media, starting by listening more closely to their experiences in order to respond to their concerns in a relevant way.     

Experiencing ‘Illegality’ as a Family? Immigration Enforcement,Social Policies,and Discourses Targeting Mexican Mixed‐Status Families

Mexican mixed‐status families have been front and center in embroiled national debates about the place of undocumented immigrants and their citizen family members in this country. These families face unique obstacles, including possible family fragmentation caused by deportation, challenges to birthright citizenship, and they are often targeted by anti‐immigrant elected officials and political pundits that perpetuate a racialized discourse that casts even citizen children in these families as an abomination of US citizenship. Therefore, “illegality” may be a familial experience that can be endured by citizens and non‐citizens alike. Despite their unique vulnerabilities, researchers know very little about how mixed‐status families experience belonging in the country while managing possible tensions and inequalities shaped by immigration status. In this article, I review the research on punitive immigration enforcement and the scholarship on social policies and discourse targeting mixed‐status families. I conclude by reviewing new directions in sociological research and suggest avenues for research that may examine mixed‐status families' subjectivities, belonging, and negotiations of family relationships.     

Is the Problem of European Citizenship a Problem of Social Citizenship? Social Policy,Federalism, and Democracy in the EU and United States*

The development of supranational (European) social rights, and therefore social citizenship, is undermined by strong, direct relationships between citizens and national welfare states. Social policies contribute to national identities because they entail direct relationships between states and citizens. In well‐developed European welfare states strong relationships between citizens and their member‐states are expected. This may prevent the development of a similar relationship at the European level. The U.S. provides a comparison case, wherein a successful transference of citizenship identity from a lower to higher level has occurred, partly as a result of the building of national‐level social citizenship, at least for certain classes of people. Revolutionary War Pensions provide an example of how social policy influences national identity. The lack of EU‐level social policy precludes the possibility of this type of identity formation. Finally, the interplay of social citizenship and democracy in both cases is explored. T.H. Marshall’s work regarding citizenship as the basis for democracy is used to understand how the inability to create a common social policy in the EU is harmful to democracy.     

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non‐citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self‐esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio‐economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition ‐‐ does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish‐born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.     

Transnational status and cosmopolitanism: are dual citizens and foreign residents cosmopolitan vanguards?

Empirically growing transnationalism and normatively demanded cosmopolitanism may be closely connected when considered as different elements of new forms of citizenship beyond the single nation‐state. Do individuals with either full (dual citizenship) or partial (foreign resident) transnational status exhibit more cosmopolitanism than mono citizens? This article decodes the multidimensional character of cosmopolitanism using major democratic theories – liberalism, republicanism, and communitarianism. Multivariate regression analyses of data from a survey among mono citizens, dual citizens and foreign residents in Switzerland reveal that a transnational status is associated with cosmopolitanism in a differentiated way. Dual citizens and especially foreign residents are more likely than mono citizens to exhibit liberal cosmopolitanism; but only dual citizens having full political rights and opportunities in two countries are more likely to exhibit republican cosmopolitanism and only foreign residents excluded from the political community of residence are more likely to exhibit communitarian cosmopolitanism. Each of them can thus be considered as vanguards in specific ways. Our study furthermore demonstrates the added value of disaggregating both cosmopolitanism and transnationalism.     

Who Claims Dual Citizenship? The Limits of Postnationalism,the Possibilities of Transnationalism,and the Persistence of Traditional Citizenship1

The dynamics of globalization, especially international migration, challenge traditional frameworks of citizenship and prompted scholars to develop new models of membership: transnationalism and postnationalism. All three‐the traditional, transnational and postnational‐explicitly or implicitly address the controversial topic of dual citizenship, or multiple membership. Lack of statistical data, however, has made it difficult to adjudicate between these models or to undertake a broad empirical assessment of dual citizenship, either over time or between people from different countries and socioeconomic backgrounds. This article outlines the testable implications of traditional, transnational and post‐national frameworks and evaluates these hypotheses using a unique statistical data source that asked respondents to report multiple citizenship, the 1981, 1991 and 1996 20% Canadian census samples. The data offer little evidence that immigrants adopt a strict postnational view of citizenship, but they reveal the possibilities of transnationalism and the continued relevance of traditional frameworks. Over time, we observe a rapid increase in the aggreate level of reported dual citizenship from 1981 to 1996. We also find that those with higher human capital, rather than the economically marginalized, are more likely to embrace dual citizenship. After controlling for individual attributes, important contextual or group effects nonetheless remain: self‐reports of dual citizenship vary significantly by birthplace and are higher if an immigrant lives in Quebec. Since naturalization levels seem to rise in tandem with reports of dual citizenship, this research suggests a certain paradox: while multiple belonging     

Citizenship in Austria,Germany, and Switzerland: Courts,Legislatures, and Administrators1

A common claim has been that liberalization of citizenship policy depends on making policy behind closed doors. I challenge one variant of this line of argument, which regards courts as the primary “countermajoritarian” champion of the expansion of immigrant rights, through a comparison of citizenship policy in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In all three countries subnational authorities play a significant role in the administration of naturalization policy. Courts have played more of a “nationalizing” rather than a “countermajoritarian” role. I also show how differences in federal structures affected recent efforts to reform citizenship policy in these countries.     

ACCOUNTING FOR STATE APPROACHES TO ASYLUM SEEKERS IN AUSTRALIA AND MALAYSIA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “NATIONAL” IDENTITY AND “EXCLUSIVE” CITIZENSHIP IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST “IRREGULAR” MOBILITY

This article uses the case studies of Australia and Malaysia to examine how diverse states in the Asia-Pacific region approach asylum seekers in practice and in discourse. Using a social constructionist approach to identity, the article highlights how governments in each country have grappled with “irregular” migration and the challenges it poses for national identity through processes of “othering” and “exclusion.” This comparison shows that the process of excluding asylum seekers on the basis of identity is not a Western phenomenon, but one extending to countries across the region. It is maintained that state discourses around asylum seekers within the two countries are framed in similar arguments centred around the concepts of “irregular” mobility, “national” identity, and “exclusive” citizenship. More specifically, it is demonstrated that both the Malaysian and Australian governments have projected asylum seekers in the public realm primarily as “illegal” through their undocumented mobility, and within this discourse as “threats” to national identity and security and therefore “unworthy” of citizenship privileges through resettlement or local integration. It is argued that each government has used trajectories specific to their own nation-building process to make their arguments more relevant and appealing to their constituents. A key premise of this article holds that an understanding of the rationale underpinning each government's asylum approach will contribute to establishing more open and constructive regional dialogue around the asylum issue.     

The Second Generation in Chile: Negotiating Identities,Rights, and Public Policy

This article presents the first study of children born in Chile to at least one migrant parent – the “second‐generation”. Based on a mixed methods and child‐centred approach, this article discusses institutional and experiential aspects of boundary and identity‐making in Chile regarding race and nationality. We first review quantitative data from the state regarding the second‐generation. Building on insights from comparative research on European states’ second‐generation integration policies, we suggest how gathering targeted Census data in Chile can inform the long‐term evaluation of state policies and programs for socio‐cultural inclusion in education and labour. We also present qualitative data from interviews with ten second‐generation children between ages eight to thirteen, born to parents from Peru and Ecuador. We attend to how they negotiate being perceived as “foreign” and/or “Chilean”. Their position in‐between the two categories is an important starting point for policies and discourse to expand notions of citizenship and belonging.     

State work and the testing concours of citizenship

Anyone trying to be a citizen has to pass through a set of practices trying to be a state. This paper investigates some of the ways testing practices calibrate citizens, and in doing so, perform “the state.” The paper focuses on three forms of citizenship testing, which it considers exemplary forms of “state work,” and which all, in various ways, concern “migration.” First, the constitution of a “border crossing,” which requires an identity test configured by deceptibility. Second, the Dutch asylum process, in which “being gay” can, in certain cases, be reason for being granted asylum, but where “being gay” is also the outcome of an examination organized by suspicion. And third, the Dutch measurement of immigrants’ “integration,” which is comprised of a testing process in which such factishes as “being a member of society” and “being modern” surface. Citizenship is analyzed in this paper as accrued and (re)configured along a migration trajectory that takes shape as a testing concours, meaning that subjects become citizens along a trajectory of testing practices. In contributing both to work on states and citizenship, and to work on testing, this paper thus puts forward the concept of citizenship testing as state work, where “state work is the term for that kind of labor that most knows itself as comparison, equivalency, and exchange in the social realm” (Harney, 2002, pp. 10–11). Throughout the testing practices discussed here, comparison, equivalency, and exchange figure prominently as the practical achievements of crafting states and citizens.     

ENHANCED CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION AND CHILDREN'S MEDICAID COVERAGE

This article examines a potential unintended consequence of the mandated Medicaid citizenship verification requirements of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act (DRA). We investigate whether or not these new rules led to an increase in the Medicaid exit rate among enrollees using state administrative data from Georgia. We do this by comparing the exit rate for children enrolled in Medicaid whose first coverage recertification occurs just after implementation of the DRA (which we refer to as a “high impact” first recertification) with those whose first recertification occurs just prior (which we refer to as a “low impact” first recertification). Our analysis suggests that children in the high‐impact first recertification group were about 2 percentage points more likely to exit Medicaid than those in the low‐impact group. Furthermore, these additional exits occurred in racial and ethnic groups more likely to be citizens than noncitizens and prereform estimates suggest that there were very few (roughly 0.10%) noncitizen Medicaid enrollees to begin with. Taken together, our results suggest that the DRA‐enhanced citizenship verification rules led to an increase in Medicaid disenrollment, and thus a reduction in coverage, among citizens. (JEL I18, I38, J13)     

TRAVEL AS AN ANALYTIC OF EXCLUSION: BECOMING NONCITIZENS,AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY AFTER THE BERLIN WALL

This article examines the ways in which travel serves as an analytic to understand citizenship and the production of noncitizens after the Berlin Wall. This production is linked to a shift in the post-Wall German and European discourses and practices of asylum, which are significantly renegotiated and restricted shortly after the Wall falls. It is not only the law that changes, but also the mobility of the subjects perceived not to belong. The production of non-citizens is also related to official and unofficial articulations that attach Germanness to “Whiteness.” “Black” subjects must not only negotiate their citizenship via real histories of mobility and displacement but also because their skin itself signifies travel and adventure. In the end, I write about the space that this imagination of travel and adventure through “Black” bodies both opens up and closes off for a politics based on “Blackness.” I turn from normative accounts to the voices and bodies of “Black” subjects themselves.     

Assimilation of Foreigners in Former West Germany

Migration movements to industrialized countries have grown in number and size, and the presence of large numbers of immigrants has raised concerns about their integration and assimilation into host societies. This article is an empirical study of assimilation of foreign nationals in Germany. Their experience may hold lessons for other relatively recent immigration destinations. As expected, language is one of the most critical factors for determining integration and assimilation at the workplace and in society. Our results indicate uneven success in these two areas, and suggest that greater language skills may be required for social assimilation, compared to economic assimilation. Among the most important findings of our study are the strong and statistically significant effects of the attitudes by Germans toward immigrants, the significant influence of the region of residence, and the ambivalence of German‐born foreign residents toward naturalization and continued stay. This signals the failure of past integration and assimilation policies. The results show that negative attitudes by ethnic Germans against others at work or in society, in general, reduce interest in integration and assimilation. This is neither new nor surprising and this research does not contribute new theoretical insights, but it demonstrates the magnitude and significance of the effects. The question of why different locations seemed to have different impacts on citizenship aspirations is beyond the scope of this article. The data do not provide information to pursue this question and we suspect that the causes are too complex for a short answer. As expected, non‐EU citizens showed greater interest in acquiring German citizenship than EU citizens. Finally, the results also indicate that the immediate post‐World War II notion of “guest workers” was not completely false. There has been significant return migration and a significant number of respondents to the survey say that they intend to return.     

Young people’s perceptions of power and influence as a basis for understanding contemporary citizenship

Persistent simplistic binary discourses of young people’s citizenship portray them either as civically deficit and disengaged citizens or the creators of new democratic modes and approaches. This paper draws on field research with two groups of young people in Australia to better recognise the nuance of young people’s experiences of citizenship, power and influence. The study investigated the extent to which different groups of young people believe that they have the power to influence society; the ways in which they seek this influence; the current barriers to their influence; and what would enable them to have greater influence. Our analysis in this paper draws on Lukes’ concepts of power [2005. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan] and Arvanitakis’ framework of citizenship engagement and empowerment [in Arvanitakis, J., and E. Sidoti. 2011. “The Politics of Change: Where to for Young People and Politics.” In Their Own Hands: Can Young People Change Australia?, edited by L. Walsh and R. Black, 11–20. Melbourne: ACER Press], but also builds on an emerging scholarship concerned with the geographic dimensions of young people’s citizenship engagement and action, as well as with the affective, relational and temporal dimensions of this engagement and action. Our findings suggest that power works in different ways to both constrain and liberate young people as citizens – sometimes at the same time. The paper concludes with an argument for the continuing need to understand young people’s lived and located experiences of engagement, power and influence in more nuanced and sophisticated ways. This includes reframing the discussion about young people’s experiences in terms of the nature of their democratic engagement and action rather than simply their citizenship.