Comparing Urban Citizenship,Sanctuary Cities,Local Bureaucratic Membership,and Regularizations

Irregular migrants tend to live in dense urban settings. Cities respond to this phenomenon with a variety of urban immigration and citizenship policies in support of irregular migrants. These urban policies produce a disparity between local inclusion and national exclusion. This article describes and compares such urban policies, namely, urban citizenship, sanctuary cities, local bureaucratic membership, and regularizations. Urban citizenship serves as the normative foundation of these policies because it claims membership for all people who inhabit a city. Regularization programs confer national residency status on irregular migrants. Pro‐immigration actors favor this policy; however, when regularizations are not possible, cities can turn to sanctuary city and local bureaucratic membership policies. It is important for practitioners to comprehend and engage with these types of urban policies since they are likely to travel to cities worldwide.     

Citizens of California: How the Golden State Went from Worst to First on Immigrant Rights

California has accomplished a remarkable shift in its historical development on immigrant rights, from pioneering and championing anti-immigrant legislation from the 1850s through the 1990s, to passing robust pro-immigrant rights policies in the last two decades. In this article, we unpack California’s policies and historical shift on immigrant rights, and develop a typology of regressive, restrictive, and progressive variants of state citizenship. We then advance a theory of how California’s progressive state citizenship crystallized in 2014 by cumulating and gaining sufficient strength in particular elements – of rights, benefits, and membership ties – to constitute a durable and meaningful form of state citizenship. Our work builds on, and speaks to, a fast-growing literature on immigration federalism and a robust literature on semi-citizenship and alternative types of citizenship. Situated in federalism, state citizenship operates in parallel to national citizenship, and in some important ways, exceeds the standards of national citizenship. While many states have passed various policies intended to help undocumented immigrants such as state driver licenses, in-state tuition, financial aid, health insurance for children, our concept and theory of state citizenship formation considers how California’s policies took more than a decade to develop and reach a tipping point, transforming in 2014 from integration policies to a more durable crystallized state citizenship.     

The Making of Mexican Illegality: Immigration Exclusions Based on Race,Class Status,and Gender

This article examines the history of US citizenship and deportation policies that have always been based on race, class status, and gender, as well as the effects of such policies on the making of Mexican illegality. Mexicans have been constructed as unassimilable and a threat to the US national polity. They are also viewed as working class likely to become a public charge. Mexican women have been imagined as extremely fertile and while their production has been desired, their reproduction has been feared. These social, political, and legal constructions resulted in the creation of Mexican illegality despite time of residence in the United States, ties to US citizens, or birthright citizenship. While scholars have documented immigration laws that have expatriated US citizen women (mainly of European racial backgrounds), policies that allowed for the deportation of “public charge” cases, and the racialization of Mexicans, who were once considered legally white for naturalization processes; the three identity-based exclusions have not been examined together to understand Mexican experiences in the United States. This article utilizes a racial, class, and gendered analysis to understand the making of Mexican illegality that began with the 1790 citizenship statue in which the United States Congress limited US citizenship rights to “free ‘white people’ and women’s citizenship was determined by their fathers or husbands.” The making of Mexican illegality continues with today’s immigration restrictions that perceive Mexicans as a threat to: national security, the white racial makeup of the country, and the stability of the economy.     

Everyday Understandings of Citizenship in Germany

Most scholarship on citizenship focuses on institutional and structural analyses and extrapolates these to individual citizens' experiences. This renders citizenship a static and uniform concept that is divorced from individuals' understandings. Data gathered during qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, Germany, in 2000–01 show how ordinary Germans' understandings of citizenship challenge an oversimplified narrative about “Germanness” which has assigned a static notion of German citizenship as based on “blood”, or principles of jus sanguinis. By analyzing interviews with 60 working-class youth, this article demonstrates that these young people construct understandings of citizenship based primarily on cultural criteria. These findings redefine prevailing assumptions about Germans' understandings of citizenship and demonstrate that citizenship and naturalization policies cannot be used as a measure of the meaning of citizenship for ordinary citizens. Citizenship is not a static or uniform concept, but is rather imagined and re-imagined by ordinary citizens in a variety of ways.     

Birthplace,bloodline and beyond: how ‘Liberian citizenship’ is currently constructed in Liberia and abroad

As a twenty-first century post-war, emigrant-sending country, Liberia reflects global citizenship norms while simultaneously departing from them, and this unique positioning offers new opportunities to theorise citizenship across spatial and temporal landscapes. In this article, I examine ‘Liberian citizenship’ construction through a historical prism, arguing that as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so too did conceptualisations of citizenship – moving from passive, identity-based citizenship emphasising rights and entitlements to more active, practice-based citizenship privileging duties and responsibilities. Given the dynamic trends in citizenship configuration across the globe and particularly in Africa, this article fills gaps in the growing body of literature on citizenship and participation in emigrant-sending countries by contributing to wider debates about how identities, practices and relations between people transform in the aftermath of violent conflict. Empirical evidence presented is based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013 with 202 Liberians in urban centres in West Africa, North America and Europe.     

‘Changing teams’: a participant perspective on citizenship ceremonies

Several European countries of immigration have recently introduced citizenship ceremonies on either a mandatory or voluntary basis. Yet, little is known about how the target group for such ceremonies experiences them, and to what extent citizenship ceremonies achieve their goals of contributing to a greater sense of belonging. In this article, we analyse interviews with more than 50 newly naturalised Norwegian citizens about their reasons to attend or to not attend the voluntary ceremony in Norway. We find little resistance to the idea of citizenship ceremonies. For some participants, the ceremony seems to have great emotional value; the majority, however, chooses not to participate.     

Explaining the birthright citizenship lottery: Longitudinal and cross‐national evidence for key determinants

In the modern nation‐state, birthright citizenship laws – jus soli and jus sanguinis – are the two main gateways to sociopolitical membership. The vast majority of the world's population (97 percent) obtains their citizenship as a matter of birthright. Yet because comparative research has focused on measuring and explaining the multiple components of citizenship and immigration policies, a systematic analysis of birthright citizenship is lacking. We bridge this gap by analyzing the birthright component in prominent databases on citizenship policies and complementing them with original data and measures. This allows us to systematically test institutional and electoral explanations for contemporary and over‐time variation in birthright citizenship. Institutional explanations – legal codes and colonial history – are consistently associated with limitations on birthright law. As for electoral explanations, specific electoral powers – Nationalist, Socialist and Social‐Democratic parties – rather than the traditional left/right‐wing divide, are linked with reforms in birthright regimes.     

Immigration,asylum and citizenship in Germany: The impact of unification and the Berlin republic

In recent years, there has been much debate over whether post‐unification Germany, often termed the ‘Berlin Republic’, represents a substantive change from the ‘Bonn Republic ‘, that is, West Germany. This article analyses Germany's immigration and citizenship policy against this background by examining various dimensions of immigration before and after unification. The article argues that both unification itself and Germany's changed international environment have resulted in far‐reaching changes in policy, which have forced a reappraisal of Germany's traditional self‐image as a ‘non‐immigration country’.     

Controlling immigration? How regulations affect migration flows

The aim of this article is to investigate whether or not and how immigration policies affect immigration flows. Such policy impacts have hardly been investigated so far as the necessary data is lacking. For the first time, two new datasets are combined to systematically measure immigration policies and bilateral migration flows for 33 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) destination countries from over 170 countries of origin over the period 1982–2010. The study finds that immigration policies have an important effect on immigration flows and thus that states are able to control their borders. To some extent the control capacities depend on other factors in attracting or deterring immigrants. The article shows that the deterrence effect of restrictive immigration policies increases when unemployment rates are high. It appears that, in these contexts, states start to care more about effectively protecting their national economy. Moreover, policies are more effective for migrant groups from former colonies or when the stock of this group is already high in a destination country. In these circumstances, information on border regulations are more easily disseminated, which in turn makes them more effective.     

Governing diversity: Dutch political parties' preferences on the role of the state in civic integration policies

This article analyses political debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, so as to identify different conceptions of the role of the state in ensuring social cohesion by governing diversity. Drawing on the literature on party systems, it presents an analysis of political party positions on the role of the state in civic integration along two dimensions: economic distribution on the one hand, and sociocultural governance on the other hand. I find that while the large majority of Dutch political parties adopt authoritarian positions on the sociocultural axis in favour of state intervention to protect Dutch culture and identity, their positions diverge significantly on the classic economic Left–Right dimension. The most contentious issue in Dutch civic integration politics is whether the state, the market or individual migrants should be responsible for financing and organising courses. Thus, this article proposes an innovative model for analysing the politics of citizenship, which enables us to comprehend how citizenship policies are shaped not only by views on how identity and culture relate to social cohesion, but also by diverging perspectives on socio-economic justice.     

Citizenship as a gift: how Syrian refugees in Belgium make sense of their social rights

While citizenship scholars have documented the increasing moralisation of immigration and integration policies, relatively few have explored how immigrants themselves make sense of their (partial) membership of European welfare states. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and participant observation with Syrian refugees, this article documents how they interpret and act upon the partial and limited citizenship status they are given in Belgium. We focus on one dimension of their experiences: their stigmatic dependency upon the Belgian welfare state. While their accounts can be partly understood as reproducing neoliberal discourses, we argue that they are also a strategic reaction against the dependency that is inadvertently created by European welfare states. From our respondents’ perspectives, their social rights thus appear not so much as entitlements to be claimed, but as a continuation of the humanitarian logic of the (unreciprocated) gift.     

Immigrant sexual citizenship: intersectional templates among Mexican gay immigrants to the USA

Existing literature on sexual citizenship has emphasized the sexuality-related claims of de jure citizens of nation-states, generally ignoring immigrants. Conversely, the literature on immigration rarely attends to the salience of sexual issues in understanding the social incorporation of migrants. This article seeks to fill the gap by theorizing and analyzing immigrant sexual citizenship. While some scholars of sexual citizenship have focused on the rights and recognition granted formally by the nation-state and others have stressed more diffuse, cultural perceptions of community and local belonging, we argue that the lived experiences of immigrant sexual citizenship call for multiscalar scrutiny of templates and practices of citizenship that bridge national policies with local connections. Analysis of ethnographic data from a study of 76 Mexican gay and bisexual male immigrants to San Diego, California, reveals the specific citizenship templates that these men encounter as they negotiate their intersecting social statuses as gay/bisexual and as immigrants (legal or undocumented); these include an ‘asylum’ template, a ‘rights’ template, and a ‘local attachments’ template. However, the complications of their intersecting identities constrain their capacity to claim immigrant sexual citizenship. The study underscores the importance of both intersectional and multiscalar approaches in research on citizenship as social practice.     

Explaining Attitudes toward Immigration: The Role of Regional Context and Individual Predispositions

Existing research makes competing predictions and yields contradictory findings about the relationships between natives’ exposure to immigrants and their attitudes toward immigration. Engaging this disjuncture, this article argues that individual predispositions moderate the impact of exposure to immigrants on negative attitudes toward immigrants. Negative attitudes toward immigration are more likely among individuals who are most sensitive to such threats. Because country-level studies are generally unable to appropriately measure the immigration context in which individuals form their attitudes, this article uses a newly collected dataset on regional immigration patterns in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland to test the argument. The data show that increasing and visible diversity is associated with negative attitudes toward immigrants, but only among natives on the political right. This finding improves the understanding of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration and has implications for the study of attitudes toward other policies and for immigration policy itself.     

Conditions of cultural citizenship: intersections of gender,race and age in public debates on family migration

This article analyses problem framings in public debates on family migration in Finland. The study focuses on the less-examined category of age and how it intersects with gender, race and religion. We examine the discursive context within which parliamentarians and the media negotiate questions of migration policies, belonging and citizenship. Our analysis identifies problem framings by combining frame analysis with the ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ approach, which understands policies as problematizations. We found that the debates held up the rather common notion of vulnerable women and children as groups that tighter family migration policies protect. The debates excluded certain racialized migrant families from cultural citizenship. Simultaneously, however, the public debate ‘whitewashed’ other families to make them suitable for inclusion. Here, the right to care for elderly family members played a central part in negotiations over cultural citizenship.     

Citizenship in a Post-Westphalian Community: Beyond External Exclusion?

This article discusses the potential for reducing the externally exclusionary aspects of citizenship in a post-Westphalian community, as conceptualised in Andrew Linklater's critical theory. Linklater's claim that post-sovereign developments in the European Union provide encouraging signs in this regard is evaluated in the light of the EU's attempted harmonisation of free movement, asylum and immigration policies. It is argued that the case of the EU provides little support for Linklater's assumptions, largely because: (1) the theory fails to recognise the exclusionary consequences of the differentiation of outsider status; and (2) it relies too much on the causal effects of institutional frameworks. While fully supporting the theory's normative stance I suggest that the strong reliance on institutional remedies may have counterproductive effects, and thus that the regionally restricted attempt to externalise aspects of citizenship, while pushing the exclusionary boundary further outwards, has not eliminated the insider-outsider distinction in an EU context.     

Comparing Radical Right Parties in Government: Immigration and Integration Policies in Nine Countries (1996–2010)

This article investigates the direct influence of radical right parties on immigration and integration policies by comparing the output of 27 cabinets of varying composition in nine countries in the period between 1996 and 2010. A Nationalist Immigration and Integration Policy index has been developed to measure legislative changes with regard to citizenship and denizenship, asylum, illegal residence, family reunion and integration. The comparative analysis of immigration and integration legislation shows that the policy output of cabinets including radical right parties deviates significantly from centre-left and centre cabinets, but does not differ much from that of centre-right cabinets. The quantitative analysis makes clear that although parties matter, radical right parties do not matter in particular. A case by case analysis confirms that the direct impact of radical right parties on policy output has been severely limited by the difficulties these parties face in adapting to public office.     

The Politics of Dual Citizenship in Hungary

The study reviews the politics underlying the 2004 referendum in Hungary on whether the country should offer extraterritorial, non-resident citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in the neighboring states of Romania, Slovakia, Serbia-Montenegro and the Ukraine. The study argues that the issue of dual citizenship for ethnic minorities and kin-states in Central and Eastern Europe is quite distinct from the issue of dual citizenship in West European immigration countries. Transborder ethnic relatives make up large proportions of some of the contiguous countries with whom Hungary has a long history of border disputes which is why the Hungarian reform initiative touched upon sensitive issues connected to the sovereignty of these states. In addition, the large size of the non-resident Hungarian population means that their potential Hungarian citizenship would have serious consequences for the Hungarian welfare state, and the determination of the political future of Hungary, where even much smaller numbers of voting non-residents might swing the vote. The article outlines the arguments that were made in favor of the reform by the political right and those against the reform by the left. It examines the initiative from the European Union's perspective and compares the Hungarian case to cases of dual citizenship in other countries of Europe. The article also raises questions about the long-term implications of this form of dual citizenship for the “re-ethnicization” of citizenship.     

Beyond post-national citizenship: an evaluation of the experiences of Tunisian and Romanian migrants working in the agricultural sector in Sicily

To further advance the literature which contests the shift from national to post-national citizenship, the aim of this paper is to compare the experiences of two groups of migrants to reveal how national immigration policies remain influential and determine the employment and living conditions of migrants. Reporting evidence from Italy on the different experiences of non-European Union (Tunisian) and European Union (Romanian) migrants employed as seasonal workers in the agricultural sector in Sicily, the finding is that the degree of exploitation they witness in their working conditions is shaped by their citizenship entitlements. The outcome is that it is revealed that (European Union) citizenship status, rather than formal employment, provides greater belonging and security to economic migrants.     

The British Citizenship Test: The Case for Reform

Immigration presents a daunting challenge to successive British governments. The public ranks immigration as one of the leading policy issues after the economy and employment. There is also greater public support for stronger immigration controls than in many other countries. In response, government strategy has included the use of a citizenship test. While the citizenship test is widely acknowledged as one key part of immigration policy, the test has received surprisingly little critical analysis. This article is an attempt to bring greater attention to serious problems with the current test and to offer three recommendations for its revision and reform. First, there is a need to revise and update the citizenship test. Secondly, there is a need to expand the test to include questions about British history and basic law. The third recommendation is more wide‐ranging: it is that we reconsider what we expect new citizens to know more broadly. The citizenship test should not be viewed as a barrier, but as a bridge. The focus should centre on what future citizens should be expected to know rather than how others might be excluded. The test should ensure that future citizens are suitably prepared for citizenship. There is an urgent need to improve the test and this should not be an opportunity wasted for the benefit of both citizens and future citizens alike.     

‘Citizens of the region’: Party conceptions of regional citizenship and immigrant integration

Citizenship is usually regarded as the exclusive domain of the state. However, changes to the structure of states resulting from decentralisation and globalisation have required a re‐conceptualisation of citizenship, as authority is dispersed, identities multiply and political entitlements vary across territorial levels. Decentralisation has endowed regions with control over a wide range of areas relating to welfare entitlements, education and cultural integration that were once controlled by the state. This has created a new form of ‘regional citizenship’ based on rights, participation and membership at the regional level. The question of who does or does not belong to a region has become a highly politicised question. In particular, this article examines stateless nationalist and regionalist parties' (SNRPs) conceptions of citizenship and immigration. Given that citizenship marks a distinction between members and outsiders of a political community, immigration is a key tool for deciding who is allowed to become a citizen. Case study findings on Scotland, Quebec and Catalonia reveal that although SNRPs have advocated civic definitions of the region and welcome immigration as a tool to increase the regional population, some parties have also levied certain conditions on immigrants' full participation in the regional society and political life as a means to protect the minority culture of the region.