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     

Dual Citizenship as a Path‐Dependent Process1

Over the last few decades, dual nationalities worldwide have increased rapidly. This is astonishing when one considers that a few decades ago citizenship and political loyalty to a national political community were considered inseparable. Overall, there has been a bumpy‐line trend towards increasing tolerance. Yet, the degree to which dual nationality is tolerated by states differs. Based on the findings of postnational and national perspectives, this analysis proposes to view tolerance and resistance towards dual nationality as a path‐dependent process. The questions dealt with are: What are the factors encouraging the generally increasing tolerance towards multiple nationalities? How can cross‐national differences regarding de jure and de facto tolerance towards dual nationality be explained? The main tendency over the past decades has been the growing emphasis on individual rights vis‐à‐vis state prerogatives in liberal democracies. The expansion of de jure tolerance towards dual nationality is due partly to inter‐, supra‐ and national‐level developments, which are connected to diverse factors such as gender equity, understandings of nationhood, immigrant incorporation and general characteristics of the political systems.     

After Postnational Citizenship: Constructing the Boundaries of Inclusion in Neoliberal Contexts

Profound changes in global exchanges of goods, ideas, and labor in the 20th century required scholars to critically engage with notions of citizenship, belonging and inclusion. Scholars of globalization initially posited the development of a postnational citizenship, wherein rights are attached to individuals as human beings rather than as members of particular nation‐states. This article questions these theories in light of the evolution of neoliberalism in global markets and the worsening problems of the displaced and rightless. We show that, with the prioritization of market participation as a condition of full inclusion, personhood is not sufficient for belonging or claims‐making. We highlight the effects of the new ‘market citizenship’ on both migrant groups and native‐born minorities, whose inclusion is increasingly based on economic success rather than legal citizenship. We consider the literature on the ways that neoliberalism builds upon historical economic inequalities to distribute citizenship rights to those individuals deemed productive within the current economic system. Finally, we demonstrate that the current citizenship regime, while not anchored in the nation‐state, is very different from early formulations of postnational citizenship. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Citizenship and inequality in a global age

Although the notion of national citizenship has long held the promise of equal membership, it has proved less useful in a world of circulating cultures, people, and loyalties through money, media, and migration. The increasing mobility of capital and people across national borders compels us to conceptualize welfare and inequality at the global level. Although the enforcement of citizen rights remains within the purview of the nation‐state, the source of these rights can no longer be firmly placed within the national framework. From cosmopolitan imaginations to postnational research, contemporary configurations of citizenship trace their legitimacy to global discourses that increasingly challenge the national order of citizenship. Yet current transformations in citizenship also point to the possibility of new inequalities, particularly, when nation‐states are increasingly able to modulate the rights they make available to immigrants, and differentiate among refugees, professionals, and investors among many other categories of people.     

Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?

This article synthesizes the literature on citizenship and immigration to evaluate the heft of citizenship and theorize why it matters. We examine why citizenship laws vary cross‐nationally and why some immigrants acquire citizenship while others do not. We consider how citizenship influences rights, identities, and participation and the mechanisms by which citizenship could influence lives. We consider frameworks, such as cultural and performative citizenship, that de‐center legal status and the nation‐state. Ultimately, we argue for a claims‐making approach to citizenship, one that is a relational process of recognition, includes actors outside the individual/state dyad, and focuses on claims to legitimate membership.     

Theorizing and Analyzing Citizenship in Multicultural Societies

I argue that sociologists have directed insufficient attention to the study of citizenship. When citizenship is studied, sociologists tend to concentrate on just one facet: rights. I elaborate four conceptual facets of citizenship. I link two—citizenship as rights and belonging—to theoretical elaborations of multiculturalism. Considering multiculturalism as a state discourse and set of policies, rather than a political or normative theory, I outline linkages between multiculturalism and two additional facets of citizenship: legal status and participation. Over the last 15 years, the idea of multiculturalism has come under withering criticism, especially in Europe, in part because it is claimed that multiculturalism undermines common citizenship. Yet countries with more multicultural policies and a stronger discourse of pluralism and recognition are places where immigrants are more likely to become citizens, more trusting of political institutions, and more attached to the national identity. There is also little evidence that multicultural policies fuel majority backlash, and some modest evidence that such policies enlarge conceptions of inclusive membership. By studying claims‐making and the equality of immigrant‐origin groups, we see that the participatory aspect of citizenship needs to take center stage in future work in political sociology, social theory, social movements, immigration, and race/ethnicity.     

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.     

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES AT THE MARGINS: Masculinities and Citizenship in the Israeli Army

This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israeli army. In Israel, hegemonic masculinity is identified with the masculinity of the Jewish combat soldier and is perceived as the emblem of good citizenship. This identity. I argue, assumes a central role in shaping a hierarchal order of gendered and civic identities that reflects and reproduces social stratification and reconstructs differential modes of participation in, and belonging to, the Israeli state.
In-depth interviews with two marginalized groups in the Israeli army—women in "masculine" roles and male soldiers in blue-collar jobs—suggest two discernible practices of identity. While women in "masculine" roles structure their gender and national identities according to the masculinity of the combat soldier, the identity practices of male soldiers in blue-collar jobs challenge this hegemonic masculinity and its close link with citizenship in Israel. However, while both identity practices are empowering for the groups in question, neither undermines the hegemonic order, for the military's practice of "limited inclusion" prohibits the development of a collective consciousness that would challenge the differentiated structure of citizenship.     

National Identity and Citizenship in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Korea

Abstract  This paper points out the limitations of culturalist approaches to the PRC and the ROK and deals with factors that contribute to the legal definition of citizenship in those two counties. The understanding of political and economic interests, rather than cultural aspects, is important in explaining the changes of the definition of citizenship there. China institutionalized a state-centered national identity, while Korea constructed an ethnic-centered national identity as they became integrated into the international order as nation-states. However, both the PRC and ROK made important changes in their legal definitions of citizenship regardless of their distinct national identities in China and Korea.     

Postnational acts of citizenship: how an anti-border politics is shaping feminist spaces of service provision in Toronto,Canada

Postnationalism has seen a modest resurgence in recent years as both a theory of citizenship and as a set of claims frequently articulated by anti-border movements. Yet the implications of postnationalism for feminist politics remain relatively under-theorized. Using interviews with feminist advocates in Toronto, Canada, this research examines how postnational challenges to state power are being mobilized in spaces of service provision addressing gender-based violence. I show how, for some advocates, a postnational politics deeply informed their critiques of state borders and restrictive immigration controls as fundamental sources of gendered and racialized violence. However, postnational approaches were also limited in offering few concrete alternatives to state protection from domestic or interpersonal violence, particularly for women with precarious immigration status. Significantly, it was through advocates’ everyday practices of service provision that they blueprinted an alternative feminist ethics of solidarity. I argue that these practices constitute postnational acts of citizenship, in so far as they attempt – albeit imperfectly – to de-border institutional spaces from within.     

Citizenship on the Margins: A Critique of Scholarship on Marginalized Women and Community Activism

This critical review essay addresses the underappreciation of citizenship inequalities in scholarship on marginalized women’s community activism in the United States. Although both students of citizenship and women’s grassroots resistance argue that neither citizenship nor lived experience is an individual‐level phenomenon or a public issue divorced from private troubles and that politics need not be formal and male, the two literatures do not break bread with each other. I contend that this lack of cross‐pollination owes to our fixation on the hallowed trifecta of race, class, gender intersectionality, but one that has elided the fact that the three have always constituted, and been constituted by, citizenship. Despite the fact that in recent decades immigrant women of color have taken the helm of community campaigns – such as in social reproduction (e.g. schools, churches, health), Environmental Justice, and immigration reform – few scholars mention citizenship and thus few analyze citizenship racism and its ties to other axes of inequality. I critique the existing scholarship by drawing on the contributions of the few works that analyze and intersect citizenship within women’s community resistance struggles. I then point to future research directions to underscore their importance in an age of more exclusionary and draconian citizenship paradigms.     

Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among returning Trinidadians?

In this article we focus on the dual identities of relatively young Trinidadians who have decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents, while still in their thirties and forties. Highly‐educated professional transnational migrants mostly make up our sample of 36; 26 possess dual citizenship. We focus on our informants’ narratives about their transnational experiences, self‐appraisals of their dual identities and how they value dual citizenship. More generally, we ask, does transnationalism supplant nationalism among our returning informants? Unsurprisingly, the diverse responses we document do not support the commonly held explanatory relationship between return adaptations, ‘national belonging’ and the expected dominance of ‘transnational belonging’. Family relations intervene significantly, both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. Feelings of national belonging often accompany transnationalism. Notably, we view dual citizenship strategically and pragmatically as advantageous to the continuation of transnational practices.     

Contextual moderators of the link between national and European identity among European youth

Identification with Europe can constitute an important part of psychological citizenship for European citizens. From a self-categorization perspective, higher-order (e.g. with Europe) and lower order subgroup identities (e.g. with the nation) may interfere with each other if they are seen as incompatible. We were interested in contextual moderators at school and country level of youth’ national identity on identification with Europe. We used multi-level regression analyses based on data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, collected from 14-year old students (n?=?71,282) from 22 European countries. Results showed strong positive effects of national identity at the individual, and classroom-level on European identity. However, main effects of national identity at the individual level were qualified by a number of interactions with contextual-level moderators. The relationship between national and European identity was weaker for adolescents attending classrooms or living in countries with lower average levels of trust in EU institutions. Living in countries with higher gender and income inequalities, less friendly immigration policies, and a communist past lessened the association between national and European identity. Results point to the powerful effects of context in shaping the relationship between national and European identity.     

Optional citizenship; articulation of interests and identities in naturalisations

Citizenship should be understood as a bundle of rights rather than as a legal expression of national membership. The citizenship status of immigrants is characterised by their human rights, their rights of external citizenship provided by sending countries, and their rights as resident aliens provided by receiving states. In this perspective naturalisation is only one amongst several options open to migrants to change and improve their legal position. The normative aspect of citizenship implies that general and basic rights should be distributed equally and universally within society. Raising the standard of alien rights, allowing for dual citizenship and conceiving of naturalisation as an individual option rather than as an obligation or as a discretionary decision of the receiving state would contribute to a more equal distribution of rights within societies of immigration. A model for explaining individual decision to naturalise is presented which is based on a combined analysis of interests and identities. The main factors that enter the model are rules applied by state authorities, social positions occupied by immigrants, the cost/benefit balance of rights in the transition to internal citizenship, and affiliations to different communities in the sending and the receiving state. The combination of rules, rights and social positions makes it possible to distinguish an objective value of internal citizenship for immigrants from transaction prices and subjective utilities. The main theoretical argument is that decisions can be influenced both by a perception of rational individual interests and by communal identities.     

Reconsidering identity: the ethnic and political dimensions of hybridity among majority and Turkish youth in Germany and England1

Sociological research has hitherto largely focused on majority ² and minority ethnic identities or citizenship identities. However, the social connections between youth are not simply ethnic dynamics but also political dynamics involving citizenship categories. This article argues that in postmodern societies, it is important to reconsider the ways we think about youth identities. Drawing upon qualitative data from a study into the political identities of majority (German and British) youth and Turkish youth, educated in two Stuttgart and two London secondary schools, the research found that fifteen‐year‐olds had no singular identity but hybrid ethno‐national, ethno‐local and national‐European identities as a result of governmental policies, their schooling and community experience, social class positioning, ethnicity and migration history. In working‐class educational contexts, many majority and Turkish youth privileged the ethnic dimension of hybridity whereas majority and Turkish youth in the two middle‐class dominated schools emphasized the political dimension of hybridity. The article demonstrates that social class and schooling (e.g. ethos and peer cultures) have a considerable role to play in who can afford to take on the more hybridized cosmopolitan identities on offer.     

Lives in limbo: Temporary Protected Status and immigrant identities

The United States formulates much of its immigration and refugee policy to match economic and political circumstances. We interpret these policy shifts as a set of graduated positions on immigration and refugee flows that attempts to discipline the lives of newcomers and, in so doing, shapes immigrant identities. In this article, we analyse the interplay between the US government and Salvadoran asylum applicants negotiating procedures that grant only temporary relief from deportation via the policy of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We find that each policy shift results in the strategic renegotiation of asylum applicants’ identities so as to achieve the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Based on Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and Ong’s concept of flexible citizenship, we argue that what appears more superficially as a patchwork strategy of immigration laws and asylum practices may be theorized more deeply as a set of flexible responses by the state that turn on identity construction at different scales, and that aim to mediate transnational relations.     

Migration and Citizenship Law in Spain: Path‐dependency and Policy Change in a Recent Country of Immigration

This article analyzes the links between migratory processes and the evolution of nationality legislation in Spain. We argue that this case challenges the theoretical models that link immigration to liberalizing reforms in citizenship law. Despite large‐scale immigration experienced over the last two decades, Spanish nationality law has remained strongly focused on keeping ties with Spanish communities abroad. To account for the high degree of stability of Spanish citizenship law we structure our analysis along three basic lines: the historical conceptions derived from Spain's past as a colonial power, as well as its tradition as a country of emigration; the lack of incentives for political actors to introduce the reform of citizenship law in the political agenda; and the strategies adopted by those political actors in relation to the politicization of immigration.     

Relative Rank‐order of Salient Identities of the Japanese

How are multiple identities of Japanese people rank‐ordered? Previous studies on multiple identities almost exclusively focus on people in the USA. Little is known about the structure of multiple identities of people living in other countries. Japan is a good comparative case because it has both similar and different social contexts than the USA. Analyzing a recent survey of a nationally representative sample of Japanese adults, I examine how multiple identities are rank‐ordered by their salience among the Japanese. The results suggest that among ten identities, the most salient are the family–marital status identity, the occupational identity, and the national identity, while the least salient identities are social class, religious, and political identities. This identity rank‐order differs from that found in a comparable study of Americans in that the rank‐orders of national and religious identities are reversed. The observed patterns also seem to contradict an emerging line of cross‐cultural research that suggests national identity is less important for the Japanese than for Americans. Overall, this paper empirically demonstrates the fundamental dictum of symbolic interactionism that self reflects society, and suggests the importance of specifying and examining country‐level factors to study identity structures.     

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.     

Citizenship struggles in Soviet successor states

"The breakup of the Soviet Union has transformed yesterday's internal migrants, secure in their Soviet citizenship, into today's international migrants of contested legitimacy and uncertain membership. This transformation has touched Russians in particular, of whom some 25 million live in non-Russian successor states. This article examines the politics of citizenship vis-a-vis Russian immigrants in the successor states, focusing on the Baltic states, where citizenship has been a matter of sustained and heated controversy." The author concludes that "formal citizenship cannot be divorced from broader questions of substantive belonging. Successor states' willingness to accept Russian immigrants as citizens, and immigrants' readiness to adopt a new state as their state, will depend on the terms of membership for national minorities and the organization of public life in the successor states." Data are from a variety of published sources.