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Citizenship
can be defined as "the status of having the right to participate
in and to be represented in politics."(1) It is a collection
of rights and obligations that give individuals a formal juridical
identity. T.H. Marshall, whose work has long dominated the debates
about social citizenship, considered citizenship as "a status
bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who posses
the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with
which the status is endowed."
Historically
the demands for citizenship rights emerged in response to the growing
power of the modern state. It is the product of the development
of the modern state in the direction of unitary internal sovereignty.
Originally, the demand for citizenship involved the enjoyment of
legal and political rights, but early in the twentieth century citizenship
was redefined to include social or welfare rights.
Citizenship
is today considered to be the binding element of a national community
and is an instrument and object of social closure. National citizenship
draws boundaries between states. It is today one of the most powerful
instruments of exclusion, every modern state identifies a particular
set of persons as its citizens and defines all others as non-citizens,
as aliens. At the same time, citizenship is an instrument of closure
within states. A conceptual, legal, and ideological boundary between
citizens and foreigners or migrants
is established by every state. Every state discriminates between
citizens and resident foreigners, reserving certain rights and benefits,
as well as certain obligations, for citizens. Every state claims
to be the state of, and for, a particular, bounded citizenry, usually
conceived as a nation. In this sense, the modern nation-state
is inherently nationalistic. Its legitimacy depends on its promoting
the interests of a particular, bounded citizenry.(2)
Although
every country has its own laws regarding citizenship, there are
two main categories into which these laws fall. In the first one,
jus sanguinis, the principle of blood, descent and heritage play
a pivotal role in defining who is, and can become, a citizen. Where
people were born is not as important as if and how they can trace
their ancestry back to the origin country. In this context, the
term 'foreigner' refers to those in the population whose heritage
cannot be traced back to the host country. In general, under jus
sanguinis citizenship policies, it is often difficult for foreigners
to naturalise, even if they are long-term residents or were native
born to the country. Those foreigners who do naturalise typically
have to demonstrate that they meet the required 'integration' criteria,
such as language skills or knowledge of the country's culture and
history. The second principle, jus solis, defines citizens as those
born within the country, regardless of the citizenship of the parents.
Foreign-born residents can, under certain circumstances, change
their status and become citizens through naturalisation. When combined,
both place of birth and citizenship status can be used to divide
the population into three categories, native-born citizens, foreign-born
citizens, and non-citizens, and define who among the foreign born
has acquired the full rights and responsibilities bestowed on all
citizens.
Some
states' citizenship law incorporates elements of both principles.
The historical circumstances under which the principle of popular
sovereignty became institutionalised in secular urban societies
or in agrarian peasant societies explain the state's choice of which
principle to base its citizenship on.
In
several discussions over the last decades, issues of citizenship
have been seen from the classical perspective of citizenship as
the legal and political expression of nationality. A "citizen"
has come to denote "a national with voting and passport rights".
This has sometimes had the effect of reducing questions concerning
citizenship to their legal minimum, i.e. matters of nationality.
At the same time, migration and intermarriage undermine the traditional
one-person/one state situation, so that many people are born with
dual citizenship now. Though some states have suppressed the possibility
of dual citizenship, citizenship laws in general are often being
relaxed or disregarded.
(1)
Baylis, J & Smith, S. 2001. The Globalisation of World Politics.
An introduction to international relations. Oxford University Press.
(2)
Brubaker, R. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany.
(EUA): Harvard University Press.
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