Morphing the Demos into the right shape. Normative principles for enfranchising resident aliens and expatriate citizens

In this article I criticize, first, democratic inclusion principles that are indeterminate with regard to democratic boundaries and indifferent towards the structural features of polities. I suggest that a democratic stakeholder principle passes these critical tests and can be applied to democratic polities of different kinds. Second, I compare birthright-based and residence-based membership regimes at state and local levels and consider how they can accommodate international migrants. Third, I argue that these two regimes are not freestanding alternatives between which democratic polities have to choose, but are combined in a multilevel architecture of democratic citizenship, in which the inclusion and exclusion dynamics of birthright and residence mutually constrain each other and every individual is included as a citizen in both types of polities.     

The political value of languages

A theory of linguistic justice needs to take into account the three distinct values of language as a medium for communication, as a source of individual identity and as an instrument for political self-government. Doing so would undermine Van Parijs’ claim that political borders and peoples should be downgraded to a purely instrumental role for purposes of social justice. But it would widen the scope of egalitarian global justice by including a universal right of individuals to membership self-governing polities and it could provide more solid theoretical foundations for his defence of coercive territorial language regimes.