Chapter eight: conclusions

Chapter eight tries to offer some conclusions. In the first section I criticise four alternatives of

residence-based citizenship and explain why they are less successful than my proposal in offering a comprehensive theory of citizenship by hitting upon some problems each of them faces. The first alternative is the ‘stakeholdership’ principle – put forward by Rainer Bauböck – which is, according to my first objection, over-inclusive: it cannot justify the inclusion of long-term emigrants and second generation born abroad into the demos. The second objection claims that the insistence on the idea that citizens must see each other as belonging to an ‘intergenerational community’ rests on a false

psychological assumption. The third objection criticises a claim regarding the proper function of a liberal-democracy where people frequently change membership (the ‘hypermigration model’): I question both the number of persons frequently changing citizenship and the frequency of this change.

The second theory is the liberal view of transnational citizenship advanced by David Owen, according to which all four categories I have discussed in this study must be included. I claim this theory is over-inclusive, too: its author cannot dismiss López-Guerra’s arguments for a residence-based citizenship theory, since his critique targets a different level: while López-Guerra asks the basic

question of who should be a citizen, Owen raises a secondary question of how to treat individuals who are already citizens and live outside the territory. Even if this author could reply by showing that everyone (resident or non-resident) should have a say in deciding who should be a citizen, I argue that every normative principle we could employ excludes ab initio some categories in one way or another. Moreover, against Owen, I claim that the ‘non-instrumental value’ membership in a country other than that of residence may have is not enough in order to support a citizenship claim. Finally, I criticise his distinction between ‘political membership’ and ‘national citizenship’ and dismiss the claim that citizenship based on pure residence cannot meet ‘certain basic standards of sociological and psychological realism’ (Owen 2010).

The third theory is not only over-inclusive, but it also applies what I call forced inclusion: besides accepting non-resident members of a political community, Ruth Rubio-Marín proposes forced inclusion of temporary and irregular migrants through an automatic naturalisation after ten years of residence. I readily grant that such a perspective would solve the problem of ‘citizens-minus’, but it

cannot answer three other difficulties: (a) it can justify neither the inclusion of ‘citizens-plus’ nor their advantages; (b) it sets an unacceptable threshold of ten years of residence for citizenship acquisition; moreover, it cannot justify the perspective of five years-period an irregular migrant must avoid the law and live in precarious social and legal conditions in order to access legal residency; and (c) it cannot accommodate forced inclusion (a mandatory and automatic process) with liberal-democratic principles.

The fourth alternative is an over-exclusive one since it excludes both categories of ‘citizens- minus’ from access to full citizenship status. It comes in two versions: the first is a ‘negotiated exclusion’. According to Torresi and Ottonelli, in case of temporary migrants democratic standards should be ‘relaxed’ in order to accommodate ‘citizen-minus’s’ plans. The second version is a ‘forced exclusion’: Daniel A. Bell argues that if a state has to choose between accepting a small number of immigrants and putting them on the path to full citizenship rights (on the one hand) and accepting a large number of people without offering them any possibility of accessing citizenship status, then the second solution is morally better since it fares better in reducing world poverty. I challenge these views, by showing that (a) a residence-based citizenship is better than conscious infringement of liberal democratic values; and (b) Bell’s ‘either/or’ alternative is false: other possibilities like Western-backed programs of reducing world poverty may prove to be both normatively and practically better

alternatives.

In the second section I honestly survey what problems residence-based citizenship can solve and what it cannot provide for (i.e., the problems my proposal finds difficult to answer). This theory can easily terminate partial statuses like those imposed on irregular migrants and temporary workers. Secondly, it can also easily help to match the two categories of ‘permanent residents’ and ‘citizens’, which is a rather complicated subject in today’s political theory. Thirdly, it can help terminating the present concern of many states regarding fictitious marriages (or other instrumental incentives for acquiring citizenship): indeed, since residence is the only requirement for citizenship acquisition, being married or not with a citizen has no influence on the naturalisation procedure. Fourthly, it does away with the immoral supplementary requirements for citizenship acquisition like citizenship tests, knowledge of local language and history, etc.

However, as any other normative theory, it also meets some serious difficulties. Firstly, it finds it difficult to answer to the ‘touch the territory and you’re in’ perspective on irregular migrants. Since irregular migrants are ‘impossible subjects’, I believe no solution can be entirely decent and flawless.

Secondly, another difficulty is the difference between dual citizenship and ‘external quasi-citizenship’:

difficulties in approaching such a proposal, but it is important to note that (a) a ‘dormant citizenship’ is still a full citizenship status so it still raises the problems discussed in chapter five; and (b) it can still generate international conflicts like those based on diplomatic protection.

The third and last part of this chapter discusses avenues for further research regarding each of the four categories I have analysed: irregular immigrants, temporary workers, dual citizens and ‘external quasi-citizens’. I also discuss reasonable and realisable prospects of residence-based

citizenship in the future. Even if today such a theory does not seem to have many chances except in a very restricted number of countries, I believe that from a normative point of view this is (and should be) the way to go.