This was previously published as a special issue of Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies. How do states in Western Europe deal with the challenges of migration for citizenship? The legal relationship between a person and a state becomes increasingly blurred in a mobile and transnational world. This volume deals with the membership dimension of citizenship and specifically with the formal rules that states use to attribute citizenship. These nationally specific rules determine how and under which conditions citizenship is attributed by states to individuals: how one can acquire formal citizenship status, but also how it can be lost. We observe six trends in citizenship policies since the early 1980s. First, we observe a trend toward completing the equal treatment of women and men with regard to descent-based citizenship attribution. Second, there is a process of convergence between countries with ius soli and ius sanguinis traditions with regard to birthright provisions. Third, the increasing acceptance of multiple citizenship is reflected in a dual trend to abolish or moderate the renunciation of the citizenship of origin as a condition for naturalisation and also to abolish or restrict provisions of loss of citizenship due to voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship. Fourth, many countries have introduced language tests and integration conditions in the naturalisation procedure and some countries are now also concluding the naturalisation process by means of a US-styled citizenship ceremony. Fifth, states increasingly take the principle of avoiding statelessness into account into their citizenship laws. Finally, we see that states start to take membership of the European Union into account in their citizenship laws. Chapters in this volume discuss both these broad trends across Western Europe, analyzing historical patterns and recent change, as well as specific developments in individual countries.

How do states in Western Europe deal with the challenges of migration for citizenship? The legal relationship between a person and a state is becoming increasingly blurred in our mobile, transnational world. This volume deals with the membership dimension of citizenship, specifically the formal rules that states use to attribute citizenship. These nationally-specific rules determine how and under what conditions citizenship is attributed by states to individuals: how one can acquire formal citizenship status, but also how this status can be lost. Migration and Citizenship Attribution observes various trends in citizenship policies since the early 1980s, analysing historical patterns and recent changes across Western Europe as well as examining specific developments in individual countries. Authors explore the equal treatment of women and men with regard to descent-based citizenship attribution, along with the process of convergence between countries with ‘ius soli’ and ‘ius sanguinis’ traditions with regard to birthright provisions. They consider how the increasing acceptance of multiple citizenship is reflected in a dual trend to abolish, or at least to moderate, the renunciation of the citizenship of origin as a condition for naturalisation, and also to restrict provisions of loss of citizenship due to voluntary acquisition of a foreign citizenship. Another trend observed and discussed is the introduction by many countries of language tests and integration conditions in the naturalisation procedure, with some countries now concluding the naturalisation process by means of a US-styled citizenship ceremony. Contributors also explore the various things taken into account under state citizenship laws such as statelessness, or membership of the European Union. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Publisher Description

The concept of citizenship -- Status -- Rights -- Identity -- Citizenship light.

In recent years, scholarly attention has shifted away from debates on ethnicity to focus on issues of migration and citizenship. Inspired, in part, by earlier studies on European guestworker migration, these debates are fed by the new "transnational mobility", by the immigration of Muslims, by the increasing importance of human rights law, and by the critical attention now paid to women migrants. With respect to citizenship, many discussions address the diverse citizenship regimes. The present volume, together with its predecessor (Bodemann and Yurdakul 2006), addresses these often contentious issues. A common denominator which unites the various contributions is the question of migrant agency, in other words, the ways in which Western societies are not only transforming migrants, but are themselves being transformed by new migrations.

Switzerland likely has the most particular naturalization system in the world. Whereas in most countries citizenship attribution is regulated at the central level of the state, in Switzerland each municipality is accorded the right to decide who can become a Swiss citizen. This book aims at exploring naturalization processes from a comparative perspective and to explain why some municipalities pursue more restrictive citizenship policies than others. The Swiss case provides a unique opportunity to approach citizenship politics from new perspectives. It allows us to go beyond formal citizenship models and to account for the practice of citizenship. The analytical framework combines quantitative and qualitative data and helps us understand how negotiation processes between political actors lead to a large variety of local citizenship models. An innovative theoretical framework, integrating Bourdieu's political sociology, combines symbolic and material aspects of naturalizations and underlines the production processes of ethnicity.

The difference between French and German definitions of citizenship is instructive--and, for millions of immigrants from North Africa, Turkey, and Eastern Europe, decisive. Rogers Brubaker shows how this difference--between the territorial basis of the French citizenry and the German emphasis on blood descent--was shaped and sustained by sharply differing understandings of nationhood, rooted in distinctive French and German paths to nation-statehood.