Caught between two worlds: mainland Chinese return migration,hukou considerations and the citizenship dilemma

Issues about migrant rights and protection are raised in cases of return migration when the country that migrants return to prohibits dual citizenship although the migrant has naturalised elsewhere. This article explores the politics of membership and rights faced by former citizens returning to reside in the society they had left. Returning Mainland Chinese migrants with Canadian citizenship status have to navigate China's dual citizenship restriction and the impacts on their Chinese hukou status that confers residency, employment and social rights. This analysis also keeps in view their relationship with the country in which they have naturalised and left, namely Canada. Migrants shuttling between the two countries face a citizenship dilemma as they have limited rights in China whereas their status as Canadian citizens living abroad simultaneously removes them from some rights provided by the Canadian state. This paper thus introduces new and pressing questions about citizenship in the light of return migration trends.     

The Partition's long shadow: the ambiguities of citizenship in Assam,India

Citizenship practices in the Indian state of Assam have a serious fault line. The government appears uninterested in policing borders and enforcing the citizen/alien distinction. This has drawn the ire of even the Indian Supreme Court. Certain ambiguities about citizenship in post-Partition India explain these practices. Pragmatic politicians have adapted to the reality of a post-Partition space that does not conform to the idealized notion of a bounded national territory with a clearly defined community of citizens. However, the tensions between ‘the national order of things’ and the reality of a non-national space have consequences: they adversely affect governmental legitimacy. Policies premised on the fiction of hard national borders that are fundamentally at odds with ground realities cannot provide the foundation for a stable legitimate political order.     

Globalization and citizenship: an Australian dilemma

Democratic citizenship, as it exists in countries like Australia, is premised on a nation-state that has sovereignty over a specific territory demarcated by internationally agreed boundaries. According to this model, citizens are supposed to control the state through democratic processes, and the state is supposed to control what happens on its territory and to decide who or what may cross its boundaries. But today globalization is eroding the capacity of the nation-state to control cross-border flows of finance, commodities, people, ideas and pollution. Powerful pressures are reducing state autonomy with regard to economic affairs, welfare rights and national culture. This leads to important questions: Does the quality of democratic citizenship remain unchanged? Are citizens still the source of political legitimacy? Do we need to rethink the meaning and mechanisms of citizenship to find new ways of maintaining popular sovereignty? How can citizens influence decisions made by global markets, transnational corporations and international organizations? These are problems that all democratic polities face, and Australia is no exception. Political and legal institutions derived from the Anglo-American democratic heritage have worked well for a century and more, but they may need to change significantly if they are to master the new realities. The central question in Castles's article is thus: What can we do to maintain and enhance democratic citizenship for Australians in the context of a globalizing world? To answer this question, he examines some of the inherent contradictions of nation-state citizenship, discusses the meaning of globalization and how it affects citizenship and looks at the effects of globalization and regional integration on Australia. He concludes that it is important to improve the quality of Australian citizenship by various measures: recognizing the special position of indigenous Australians and action to combat racism; combatting social exclusion; reforming the constitution to inscribe rights of active citizenship in a bill of rights; and reasserting the model of multicultural citizenship.     

Contesting privilege with right: the transformation of differentiated citizenship in Brazil

This paper suggests that new understandings of rights associated with right to the city movements in many cities around the world are subverting special treatment rights (understood as privilege) and the systems of differentiated citizenship that support them. To make this case, it examines the Brazilian formulation of differentiated citizenship as a telling historical example of a politics of difference based on a combination of universal membership and special treatment rights. It argues that by denying the expectation of equality and emphasizing that of compensatory equity in the distribution of rights, Brazilian citizenship became an entrenched regime of legalized privileges and legitimated inequalities. This paper then analyzes the insurgence of an urban citizenship in the poor peripheries of Brazilian cities since the 1970s, which promotes new kinds of contributor rights, the text-based rights, and the right to rights. It ends with a discussion of the entanglements and contradictions of these formulations of citizenship and rights.     

Mononationals,hyphenationals, and shadow-nationals: multiple citizenship as practice

Multiple citizenship has in recent decades moved from an unwanted phenomenon in international relations to a fairly common transnational status. Multiple citizenship has nevertheless so far been studied mainly as a political and juridical status by comparing national legislations. Much less notice has been given to actual dual citizens' citizen participation and construction of citizens' identities. Only when citizenship is studied as these kinds of practices do the hypothetic possibilities and problems associated with the status get their meanings and contents. This paper concentrates on examining dual citizens' identifications to their respective citizenships and how these affiliations transfer into possible citizen participation. Results are based on extensive analysis of survey (n = 335) and interviews (n = 48) carried out among dual citizens living in Finland. Contents and forms of dual citizens' national identification and citizen participation were reviewed through ideal types: resident-mononationals, expatriate-mononationals, hyphenationals, and shadow-nationals.     

Migration,citizenship, and the problem of moral hazard

Recent literature on international migration focuses on the benefits it confers on migrants in the form of better opportunities and living conditions, as well as on households receiving remittance. Although legal migrants in OECD countries often enjoy more rights than they would at home, this paper also looks at some of the negative aspects for sending countries. The paper uses two cases, the Philippines and Morocco, countries that have elaborated large-scale and successful policies to facilitate the export of labor and the flow of remittances. Despite decades of massive migration abroad, Morocco still has surprisingly poor social indicators, whereas the Philippines, despite much higher social indicators, has significant levels of poverty. Despite the long-term use of this development tool, migration, while opening up opportunities for people who leave home, maybe less positive for those who remain behind. Citing the views of migration experts as well as local voices, this paper examines some downsides of migration, including its use as a safety valve for discontent that may actually delay demands for needed domestic reforms that would broaden social rights at home.     

宁夏城乡二元社会保障法律制度的现状与问题分析

中国的二元经济结构,导致了包括宁夏在内全国实行城乡二元社会保障法律体系。目前,宁夏农村社会保障体系建设仍然滞后于城镇社会保险体系。农村居民的社会保障水平不高。宁夏城镇居民的社会保险、社会救济、社会福利和社会优抚安置已经建立了相对完善的体制和制度。可是在农村,上述基本社会保障体制和制度仍在积极探索和完善中,城乡社会保障工作还存在相当大的差距。