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The increased mobility of people across national borders, whether by choice or by force, has become an integral part of the modern world. Such mobility, of course, has a long history. In the contemporary world, however, migration is occurring on an unprecedentedly large scale. This change has produced a number of political challenges to both policymakers and political theorists.
This symposium seeks to study the impact of migration on the concept and practices of citizenship. It discusses the evolving practice of dual citizenship, the growing disaggregation of citizenship rights from citizenship status and the conditions under which the traditional notion of citizenship is being challenged by new forms of citizenship practices.
Until recently, citizenship was understood as an all-or-nothing status: immigrants were automatically put on the road to citizenship or were segregated from the rights of the citizen. For those who were put on the road to citizenship this meant gradually and continuously acquiring the rights of the citizens only if they become citizen of their host country and therefore lose the citizenship of their home country. However, this practice has been put into question as political reflections are promoting an inclusive conception of citizenship. Today, citizenship tends to be understood as a discrete concept, a bundle of rights that can be acquired independently of the formal citizenship status. Permanent residents are being granted rights equalized with those of citizens in most democratic receiving states while more and more countries are abandoning the idea that those who naturalize have to renounce their previous nationality. These developments have blurred the old line separating aliens from citizens.
While some observers see these phenomena as the end of state-bound citizenship and the beginning of a transnational one, others are concerned about new arising issues such as multiple loyalties or the new meaning of being a citizen. This symposium aims at clarifying this debate.
