Globalisation ensures that an increasing number of people live outside the territory where they were born. For the great majority of such inhabitants currently living in western Europe or North America, home is the place where they live, even if their ethnic roots lie elsewhere.
However, to become a citizen in their chosen home is difficult: there are differences in the requirements from one country to another, ranging from the conservative imposition of assimilation, to much more liberal approaches.
In Switzerland, the applicant has to have his or her citizenship application fully endorsed on a very local level, and not only must master the national (or cantonal) language as such, but the appropriate local dialect, besides proving that he or she is a generally respected pillar of that local society both as a lay person and as a professional.
In Sweden, by contrast, the only formal requirements include a period of minimum residency, and a good conduct clause. All immigrants are also entitled to attend classes in Swedish as a second language, including a certain level of local civic knowledge. There is easy access to materials about various aspects of civic life, many available in a multitude of languages: classes are voluntary and free of charge. For those who choose, an annual citizenship ceremony (on national day) is available, including a welcome to Swedish society, more courses, a cultural programme and a formal reception.
The authors of People Flow have proposed connecting such a citizenship ceremony to the wider European context. What is interesting about their prototype in general is the acknowledgement of a shift which has been taking place over the last decade, towards the creation of a concept which would have been considered an aberration only a few years ago: European citizenship.
This profound transformation of a citizenship concept still conditioned by national affiliation into a form of supra-national belonging, is an attempt to rise to the challenge of the unprecedented effects of globalisation, by creating some basic common ground of rights and duties beyond national borders.
The modern concept of citizenship is changing. Take as an example the challenge of dual citizenship. Can one be loyal to more than one state? For a long time this seemed highly improbable and unreliable. Nations worldwide did their best to cultivate such mistrust: dual citizenship was prohibited by law not only nationally, but also internationally, by mutual agreement.
However, increased international migration and globalisation have had the effect of reversing this situation over time. Old objections based on nationalist fears of conflicting loyalties in the hypothetical event of war, have given way to a much greater preoccupation with the human rights of the individuals concerned.
Sweden has already incorporated the concept of dual citizenship in its Citizenship Act. Other countries are about to follow. Most recent analyses of the data have led to a revised assessment that long-term residency and full integration in society, however imperfect and problematic the process may still be, should qualify for recognition as double belonging or dual citizenship.
Double loyalties: the problems of naturalisation
The concept of the modern citizen was once relatively unproblematic. A citizen was someone born in the country (jus soli) of parents having their roots in the same country (jus sanguinis). Every inhabitant was assumed to belong to the (national) category one way or another, and implicitly, to the same unitary ethnic, cultural, religious group. As in more traditional societies, multiculturalism was hardly acknowledged. Being a resident was similar to being a citizen, since non-citizens were a very unusual occurrence.
Since the founding of nation-states, citizenship rights have been strictly regulated as an expression of state sovereignty. At times, this has contradicted the basically mutual nature of what we might call the citizenship contract, whereby the state offers protection to the citizen in exchange for the latters commitment to a strong state. Many totalitarian regimes have restricted the right to leave the territory of ones country of origin. There have even been cases where people were deprived of the right to renounce a citizenship regarded as the unilateral prerogative of the state.
Citizenship embodied the privilege of belonging to the same nation. Hence the frequent terminological confusion between such overlapping but alternative terms as nationality and citizenship. A nation embodies the idea of unity. An integrated, cohesive society becomes one with the state it forms, a people. The possibility of joining this compact group without naturally belonging to it from scratch appears in modern history as a rather late and unusual occurrence.
International migration has changed this initial assumption. To the permanent, and given bond by birth, we now have to add the possibility of affiliation through the choice of the outsider, creating a bond where none has previously existed.
However, being accepted as an equal remains a privilege: club membership needs to be earned and justified, inside and outside the group. Loyalty and trust are still associated with the very concept of belonging in this case to a nation by the bond of citizenship. Moreover, just as citizenship implies the right to protection even beyond the boundaries of the state, so shifting citizenship also implies shifting loyalties.
Some countries have intermediary ways of becoming a citizen via what could be called secondary choice for example, by adoption, by growing up in that society (also called increscens) or similar procedures and motivations. These generally require a rather simple administrative procedure.
Naturalisation, when outsiders choose for themselves to be accepted by the society / nation / people, as an integral and equal component part, remains the most problematic and controversial route. Naturalisation immediately poses the question: can one really shift loyalties?
Hitherto, it has been assumed that being born into a given society with given features, and affiliated by such innate loyalties as kinship, must ensure a deep-seated commitment to the values and interests of that society. These affiliations are not a matter of individual choice but rather of collective inheritance, based on imposed decisions that in many cases are imbibed unquestioned as a natural part of the system, transmitted by ones family background, by blood descent and kinship. Can we envisage a citizenship adopted through personal choice ever creating a bond as strong or permanent as the natural bond assumed to be part of blood descent?
Today, even after having lived most of their life in the host country, long-term residents can be considered as outsiders. Meanwhile, distantly blood-related kin, who have hardly any personal link to their country of origin may be considered as naturally belonging and welcome back to that country, with full opportunities to enjoy more or less immediate full citizenship rights.
One extreme example is offered by Israel, where the immigration of ethnic Jews is considered a return to the country of origin (albeit after 2,000 years). Another is Germany, which has regarded ethnic Germans as de facto citizens, irrespective of the distant nature of their personal kinship. Japan also is paradoxical, for example in welcoming kin with distant Japanese roots from Brazil while having major difficulty in accommodating Koreans who have lived in Japan for generations.
Categorising immigrants is, moreover, a way of enacting differential treatment on legally justifiable grounds. Citizens of a Nordic country moving to another Nordic country enjoy equal treatment with the local citizens. Immigrants not coming from EU-member or associated countries of the EU, and thus not due the preferential treatment enjoyed through free movement agreements, have to wait longer to achieve similar rights, including applying for citizenship, which remains the only way of enjoying the countrys full protection.
Darwinian concept of migration?
There is an increasing tendency in developed countries characterised by migration to consider that citizenship ought not to be a free gift. Even though it is free for those inheriting it, when it comes to naturalised citizens, there are minimum requirements based on a priori classifications. Moreover, questions of legal or social citizenship merge in peoples minds with an increasingly aggressive discourse which distinguishes between deserving and undeserving classes in society, based on classifications more appropriate to the distant past.
Such concepts as the deserving and undeserving reached their zenith in the 19th century Poor Laws in Britain denounced by Charles Dickens. The classification survived in various forms as common law-based legislative systems, found today for example in the United States, where their application regularly comes up for acrimonious review. Immigration and citizenship law directly apply these binary opposites to decide who will be entitled or not to stay, and to become fully entitled citizens.
Citizenship is always conditional. But this model, which insists on an a priori division between those considered worthy or not of even being given a chance, directly threatens what remains of the older concept of human rights.
In their proposed model, Theo Veenkamp and his colleagues link citizenship status to the needs of the welfare state, in a pragmatic construction which foregrounds the difficulties of maintaining a sustainable welfare system.
This is persuasive only if we consider people flow as an economic problem, with the people coming second. To be sure, the proposed solution, albeit based on conservative economic principles, is a radical one. What it does is to remove the basically protective function of the state at the core of the existing concept of the state-citizen, and replace it with a relationship which gives unilateral precedence to the state, allowing the state to dissociate itself from individuals for the greater common good of the people here perceived as a monolithic entity. Such an idea is more in accordance with the discourse of natural selection than with modern concepts of democracy.
Certainly, providing personal development pathways for all able members of society, especially if that includes education, healthcare, labour market support, and family services, could ensure that migrant capabilities were used and not wasted, as they often are now. However, the People Flow authors seem to forget that the natural result of such a system must be to integrate these individuals in the existing labour market, and furthermore to enable them to implicitly support the system as taxpayers, thereby offering them the possibility of repaying the debt to society.
But it is much less clear how those retired, disabled or permanently dependent on public care would be guaranteed a minimum level of basic shelter, care and income. What is the main difference between the present welfare system when it comes to these categories, and the one here proposed?
There is of course a difficulty simply resulting from the need to simplify a complex system. However, this weakness becomes a liability when it comes to explaining how it is to enforce the changes it proposes for 2050. I understand that at this point People Flow is a theoretical model designed as an intellectual challenge, a paper product rather than a developed or feasible alternative. Yet there is a danger that it will remain cerebral.
Citizens and partial citizens
Meanwhile, the integration of newcomers need not be connected to granting citizenship in any way. Indeed, we would do better for the time being to continue to concentrate on developing a normal, gradual process of integration for residents, whether they intend to apply for citizenship or not.
Such a cautious approach is all the more necessary, since certain countries have such a long qualifying time before people may even be allowed to apply for citizenship (in Japans case, thirty years, and in many other countries ten or more years). Newcomers themselves, meanwhile, need access to the society they live in as fast as possible.
So how should non-citizens who reside in the same country be treated? Such a resident can be considered as in some ways a partial citizen, with scaled-down protection, but also duties. The protection afforded by the state is however strategically limited to its own territory. In addition, under certain circumstances any guarantees can be further limited.
The main difference between citizens and residents remains the fact that while a citizen can be legally punished for falling foul of the accepted order, they can never be forced to leave the territory of the country of citizenship. For residents, however, similar circumstances can lead to deportation. Rights to reside cannot be compared to those of a legal citizen. Certain problems inevitably follow.
The status of long-term residents is a matter of particular concern. Setting aside those historical immigrant populations who going back hundreds of years have long ceased to be considered immigrant, the initial move of these residents may go back two, three or even more generations.
On the one hand, it is intended that they should become integrated fully into society. A resident might enjoy partial voting rights, and share some social rights based on their contribution to the society they find themselves in. People in this position might be called denizens. They have been granted a sanctioned form of partial citizenship.
On the other hand it is indeed still partial, because this category of residents must learn to expect to be treated differently at different times and places, especially when it comes to the most sensitive and in many ways controversial rights, such as the right to vote in the national elections or qualification for military service.
In everyday life, the intangible area of informal rights is the most sensitive. It poses even more difficult questions. European legislation basically has to comply with some minimum standards in relation to human rights. Even though the matters of principle involved seldom have an enforceable side, they play an important role in marking out basic non-discriminatory areas.
However, having a formal right to work does not necessarily imply that one actually does find work or even, that one can indeed enjoy equal (un)employment rights. Similarly, having the official right to reside doesnt automatically provide one with a dwelling.
The enforcement of such rights in practice exposes innumerable matters of discriminatory treatment which, even though prohibited by law, can be extremely difficult to cope with in practice. The inability to find employment may mean that a persons capacity has simply not been utilised, rather than that it is not needed; and that a society has failed to make better use of resources that could prove valuable.
It is to be hoped that in the longer term the transformation of citizenship rights will have more impact on the lives of these migrants than the arguments over how they should be treated: a development not relying on our approach to people flow, so much as on our attitude towards ourselves.
