Citizenship has been rediscovered in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist regimes and the breakdown of multi-national states. This rediscovery revealed not only great opportunities with regard to democratic inclusion, national redefinition and the remedying of past wrongs but also important risks, such as legal and political exclusion, ethnic engineering and discrimination. The broader revival of citizenship in recent decades has triggered a renewed academic interest in issues of citizenship, albeit this research had remained biased towards Western experiences, such as long-term immigration and social integration. Although it would be ill-advised to talk of Eastern European models of citizenship, the region does present a number of empirical and theoretical puzzles that can enrich the existing literature by challenging conventional approaches and stimulating more-balanced and contextual theoretical perspectives.
The prevalent conceptual approach used to assess multiple citizenship legislation is based on analysing a set of selected elements of the relevant legal framework. This paper argues that the evolution of legal rules on dual citizenship cannot be comprehensively analysed using methods created for comparative analyses and based on a narrow selection of legal rules that reflect either a restrictive or an open approach to dual citizenship. The simplified approach that focuses on the analysis of selected fragments of explicit legislation generates results that may be misleading. Therefore, the terms of reference for comparative study of multiple citizenship should be elaborated and extended. A comprehensive comparative method also has to take into account the migration context as well as relevant aspects of the legal and political context. This article explores these issues through an analysis of Polish legal rules in the field of dual citizenship.
Keywords: citizenship; nation building; statehood; former Yugoslavia
Abstract
The break-up of the former Yugoslavia resulted in the establishment of seven states with manifestly different citizenship regimes. Relating the politics of citizenship to the dominant nation-building projects, this paper argues that in the post-Yugoslav countries in which nation-building projects are consolidated (Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia) citizenship regimes converge around ethnic inclusiveness, while in those where nation building is contested (Macedonia and Montenegro) territorial rather than ethnic attachments are articulated in citizenship policies. In the case of Kosovo, and to a certain degree Bosnia and Herzegovina, policies emphasise territory due to international involvement in the shaping of their citizenship regimes. Even though all of these states have adopted ius sanguinis as the main mechanism of citizenship attribution at birth, the different approaches to naturalisation and dual citizenship indicate that the politics of citizenship are inextricably linked to the questions of nation building and statehood. To explore these issues, the paper first outlines the main traits of citizenship policies in contested and consolidated states. It proceeds by looking at different naturalisation requirements in the two groups of states. It argues that extension to ethnic kin occurs only in countries in which statehood and nation building are consolidated, where it serves to project an image of national unity. In states that are challenged by several competing nation-building projects, citizenship attribution through ethnic kinship is impossible due to lack of internal unity. The paper also analyses approaches to dual citizenship, identifying patterns of openness and restrictiveness. By doing so, it links the politics of citizenship to the interaction of foreign policy mechanisms in post-Yugoslav countries and identifies the points where these regimes overlap or conflict with each other.
Keywords: Albania; Kosovo; citizenship; nation-state; Europe
Abstract
This paper examines the Albanian state–nation constellation in the Balkans in the light of the European Union (EU) integration process with a focus on citizenship configurations in Kosovo and Albania. It addresses an important puzzle: why legal norms of citizenship do not follow the emerging practice of stronger trans-border co-operation in the Albanian ethnic and cultural space. The study shows that the process of EU integration is the key to understanding and explaining this puzzle, for it provides an opportunity for ‘constructive ambiguity’ around which both ethnic and statist brands of Albanian nationalism, as well as various elite fractions, can coalesce and coexist. In a wider context, Albanian citizenship configurations are shaped by the ever-evolving complex relationship between nation, state and Europe.
Keywords: dual citizenship; simplified naturalisation; ethnic Hungarians; loss of citizenship; free-movement rights
Abstract
As the adoption of the Hungarian simplified naturalisation scheme raised much tension both in the neighbouring countries of Hungary and in the main host countries of EU citizens, this paper summarises the nature of such reactions and the most frequent fears that EU states expressed. The main aim of the study is to show what effects a country’s modification of its citizenship rules may have on the situations of other EU member-states and European Union citizens. The article also raises one practical aspect of the situation that evolved as a result of the answer by Slovakia to the Hungarian modifications – namely the ex lege withdrawal of Slovakian citizenship if a person acquires a new one from another country. It introduces in detail the free-movement aspects of ethnic Hungarians losing their Slovakian citizenship, while not leaving their homeland in Slovakia, arguing that people in such a situation may rightfully and immediately be eligible for permanent residence rights, which would provide them with a higher level of protection.
Keywords: citizenship; migration; restitution; Romania; Moldova
Abstract
This paper unpacks the legitimacy gap existing between post-communist policies of citizenship restitution, the experiences of these policies, and the media coverage of these policies. Considering citizenship restitution first as analogous to property restitution, theoretically citizenship restitution appears as compensatory, to right the wrongs of communist- and Soviet-era seizures and border changes, and appears to establish citizenship restitution as a right. Using UK media coverage of Romania’s policy of citizenship restitution vis-à-vis Moldova, the paper shows the extent to which this policy is framed as an illegitimate loophole propagated by a ‘Romanian Other’ which is ‘giving out’ EU passports, exploited by an impoverished and criminal ‘Moldovan Other’, and inflicted on a ‘UK Self’ that is powerless to stem the tide of migration and block routes to gaining access to the EU via such policies. However, the paper also contrasts, and challenges, this media framing by using interviews with those acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova to demonstrate the extent to which acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova is a costly and lengthy procedure. Overall, the paper shows the extent to which citizenship restitution is a contested procedure, constructed as a right by the state seeking to compensate former citizens, and as illegitimate by those who construct a logic resulting from feeling threatened by policies of citizenship restitution.
Acquiring citizenship in the country of resettlement is the ultimate step on the integration pathway of a resettled person. For people from countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU), we can see a great variety in patterns of citizenship acquisition and changes in migration policy governing the granting of citizenship. Russia is the main player in this field. As a descendant of the fSU, the country uses its right to determine whether or not to grant its citizenship to people in the new independent countries as a way of maintaining its influence on the post-Soviet and even the former Russian Empire regions. Russian citizenship was granted to m 8.6 million people between 1992 and 2016 (excluding the Crimean population), more than 92 per cent of whom were from the fSU. Russia employs a range of different policies, starting with its compatriot policy for individual resettlement; then comes its not formally declared policy of issuing Russian passports for the population of non-recognised states (such as Transdnestria) and finally there is Russia’s policy of automatically granted citizenship for 2 million Crimean people. This paper explores the phenomenon of Russian citizenship policy and compares it with European or Eurasian policy governing fSU countries. It also discusses the implementation of this policy at both regional and global levels.
Are migrants ‘special individuals’? This apparently innocent question has been long overlooked by migration studies and by sociology more generally. It is only relatively recently that it has been picked up as a specific key research issue. And with good reasons: with the world migrant population expanding, ‘international mobility’ has been highlighted as a significant cleavage that cuts across societies and cohorts, possibly shaping emerging inequalities and socio-cultural differences. Existing migration theory can, at best, account for the direction and (rough) size of population flows in aggregate terms, but it remains almost blind to the profile of who is going to move and who is, in fact, more likely to stay put in sending communities. This is a serious limitation in both theoretical and policy-oriented terms. Grabowska's book addresses the issue openly with reference to the single largest nationality of migrants within Europe - Poles.
This long-awaited book is a recent addition to the considerable volume of important research on post-enlargement Polish migration in the UK. Originally guided by a methodological nationalism paradigm, Garapich’s study on Poles in London approaches the topic of migration and ethnic identity from a different perspective. In contrast to other works within this field, which prefer to study sameness and uniqueness, the author focuses on class and intra-ethnic divisions within migrants’ boundaries, deploying other important concepts from related disciplines, such as ‘imagined community’ and discourse. But what makes this book even more special is its examination both of how Poles makes sense of the super-diverse locality of a global city with its own complex ethnic relationships, and of how they use, perform, thrive in, but also sometimes struggle with, transnational living. By the same token, a vigorous ethnographic methodology, rich sites of data collections, a thorough examination of multi-genre data (i.e., qualitative interviews and focus groups coupled with field notes from participant observations), as well as a richness of examples from the field to illustrate the author’s point, all turn this book into a fine example of a distinguished research monograph. The author chooses to collate and to blend data harvested from several of his ethnographic projects, including his original PhD thesis, spanning roughly the first decade of Polish EU membership between 2003 and 2013.
Informal Trade, Gender and the Border Experience provides a significant contribution to the existing theoretical, methodological and empirical literature on trade and border studies with a post-positivist approach.
Race-Making in the East of Europe: Understanding Imperial and Colonial Histories and their Afterlives in the Dynamics of Race-Making and Migration in the Region
