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.