Citizenship, Ethnicity

Developed in a quasi-scientific biological discourse in the nineteenth century, the word “race” referred to different species of persons, hierarchically ordered as naturally superior and infe­rior. This use of the term is now discredited. It is generally held, among sociologists and biologists at any rate, that humans are of the same genetic stock and that there is a continuum of individuals in terms of any of the features used to distinguish them – color, size, intelligence, and so on – rather than distinct groups which exist as “natural kinds”. Nevertheless, claims about “race” are still used to distinguish people in social life more widely.

The term “ethnicity” is somewhat less commonly used, though its contestation in cultural politics is increasing. Although it is, therefore, less “dangerous” than “race, ” the two terms are often closely connected. In Europe, “ethnicity” is used to denote cultural difference, but only those groups distinguished by color are normally referred to as “ethnic groups”. Italians, Poles, and Ukrainians are rarely designated in this way. In this respect, ethnic minorities are racialized groups. In North America, where immigration is much more established as the norm, this is not always the case: it is more common to refer to white people as belonging to ethnic groups. The question of the interrelation of “race” and ethnicity is further complicated because what is called “new racism” calls for the exclusion of minorities from the nation on the basis of their unassimilable cultural difference, without grounding this in biological difference. At the same time, “ethnicity” is increasingly mobilized in political struggles as a self-descriptive term to represent cultural identity. In many countries, arguments concerning the need for culturally differen­tiated citizenship rights are now made as the only way in which racialized ethnic minorities can be assured of respect on the part of the majorities with whom they must live.

A further challenge to settled assumptions about citizenship comes from the way states now grant rights to non-citizens. The paradigm case of non-citizens who are entitled to rights as long-term residents within state territories in Europe is “guest-workers”. Originally invited and given temporary work visas, there are guest workers who have been residents now for decades in Western Europe, especially Germany and France, and many of them now have children born in their new home states. Other non-citizens with entitlements in Europe and North America include asylum-seekers and refugees who, with illegal migrants, make up the majority of the most recent wave of migration. As a result of successful rights-claims on states by non-citizens, it is argued that citizenship itself is changing: it no longer involves rights for nationals to the exclusion of all those who do not have nationality. As rights are extended to residents and others who make claims on the state on the grounds of universal human rights, membership of the civil sphere is also extended to include persons as human beings.

Until the 1980s, there was a general belief amongst sociologists and others that mass migrations had ended, and debates over citizenship rights in relation to discrimination, racism, and multiculturalism took place on the basis of this assumption. In fact, while immigration into the US was restricted from the 1920s, and European countries ended systematic labor migration from the mid-1970s, migration continued in other forms. There were the families of migrant workers who were granted rights of settlement on the grounds of “family reunion”. This form of migration was particularly important in European countries like Germany with its “guest-worker” system. In the US, it actually led to an increasein immigration in the 1960s and 1970s, and it also meant more visible immigration with the entry of Asians and Latin Americans rather than the Europeans who had previously made up the majority of migrants. There was also a significant migration of managerial, professional, technical, and scientific workers who moved between advanced capitalist countries. These privileged workers are usually ignored in discussions of migration.

Since the late 1980s, there has been political alarm in all Western countries about illegal immigration and asylum-seekers, because they are understood to threaten nation-states’ control of their borders. As a result, all states have taken measures to discourage new forms of migration. In the US, there have been attempts to control illegal immigra­tion, by penalizing employers who knowingly hire unauthorized aliens and by stricter policing of the border with Mexico. In Europe, immigra­tion measures have been linked to the institutions of the European Union. While to some extent travel across borders within the Union has been made easier, increased resources have been made available for surveillance of the external borders and the policing of migrants and asylum appli­cants, including a computerized database of criminals and deported and unwanted persons. There is also growing international cooperation between the countries of Europe, North America, and Australasia to facilitate harmonization of immigration policies and to combat illegal immigration. Measures include the use of detention camps where migrants are held, sometimes for years, in overcrowded and poor conditions whilst waiting for asylum cases to be heard.

An alternative, much more optimistic, assessment of global migration processes sees them as significant for the way in which they have prompted a form of post-national citizenship. Migrant groups who are resident but not citizens in Europe (most notably “guest-workers”) have won human rights to a wide range of benefits within European states. They have been able to do so because international human rights have been incorporated into national law in Europe. Organizations representing migrants have won civil rights to appeal against deportation, political rights to vote in local elections, cultural rights to translation services in public institutions, and a range of social rights to healthcare, education, housing, and welfare. As a result of global migration and developing regime of international human rights are now based on universal personhood, not member­ship of a particular nation. Nationality and rights are disarticulated as the absolute distinction between “citizenship” and “foreigner” is eroded within nation-states, at least in terms of formal legal rights.

Theorists of post-national citizenship are much more optimistic because they do not see the state as acting in a singular and unified fashion with regard to migration processes. Nor do they see a homogeneous global order emerging. It is rather that there is often a void in national law with respect to detailed provision for non-national resi­dents and asylum-seekers. Under these conditions, associations, organiza­tions, and individuals maneuver to try to gain a measure of security and well-being when non-citizens would otherwise be without rights – with some degree of success.

It is not, then, that the proliferation of citizenship statuses undermines the state. On the contrary, in some respects, it may be that the legitimacy and scope of the state is strengthened in the multiplicity and variety of citizenship claims. It is states that are called on to guarantee human rights. In the case of refugees, for example, it is because states have the duty to protect and further the well-being of the population residing within their territories that asylum-seekers may legitimately claim to be stateless when they are in danger of persecution in their homeland. Furthermore, it is not obvious either that post-national citizenship undermines nationalism. On the contrary, it may be rather that claims to nation­ality, cultural distinctiveness, and self-determination that were previously linked together in nation-states are now disarticulated and re-articulated as core elements of what it is to be human.