Citizenship unhinged

Catherine  Dauvergne

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511810473.008

7 - Citizenship unhinged

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Catherine Dauvergne

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Catherine Dauvergne: Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

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Summary

Changes in migration laws, whether formalized or discretionary, reverberate throughout citizenship law. Like migration laws, citizenship laws in prosperous Western states are displaying an increasing similarity at present, with more states permitting dual citizenship and more states opting for citizenship rules that come somewhere between the traditional jus sanguinis and jus soli principles. Citizenship, as the most privileged form of membership, seems remote from illegal migration. Nonetheless, both popular and scholarly talk of illegal migration introduces citizenship into the discussion in fairly short order. This happens because citizenship is easy shorthand for legitimacy, and because citizenship law and migration law work together in creating the border of the nation.

This chapter considers what citizenship laws mean for illegal migration. Its central assertion is that citizenship as a formal legal status is enjoying a resurgence of authority at present and this is directly linked to the worldwide crackdown on illegal migration. I begin by considering how migration law and citizenship law work in tandem. Given this relationship, I then outline how the pressures of globalization on migration laws are transferred through the migration law “buffer” to citizenship laws. This leads to the conclusion that citizenship law reflects the paradoxical nature of globalization as we see here that inclusions and exclusions are increasing at the same time. Finally, in considering the role that amnesties play in both the politics and the law of illegal migration, the fiction of formal legal citizenship is unmasked.

Type: Chapter
Information: Making People Illegal
What Globalization Means for Migration and Law
, pp. 119 - 141

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810473.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

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