From Immigrants to Citizens

For many migrants there is no initial intention of permanent settlement. However, migration dynamics are intertwined with individual’s life cycles. Some migrants may want to prolong their stay because either they have succeeded in integrating into the host society, or because they have failed to meet their expectations and confront several difficulties to return. Also, having their descendants born and/or socialized in the host country may act as an additional incentive to settle in the host country because of the difficulties that it may represent for them to live in a different country. As a consequence when governments interfere to try to control immigration, most likely as a reaction of economic cycles, they confront different challenges than economic ones. Temporary migration has more likely transformed into permanent settlement or family reunion (Castles and Miller 2009:33).

Beyond economic integration, migrants are also confronted with their integration in the social and political communities of their host countries. Yet, as Bauböck argues “[a] democratic polity is never entirely identical with a society (…).[A]

democratic procedure of decision-making creates its own kind of membership,

which indentifies individuals as potential voters and not just as participants in social interactions” (Bauböck 1993:174). In this way, liberal democracies usually constrain the access to the polity, via the selection of its members.

The concept of citizenship refers to a particular type of legal bond between an individual and a state. T.H. Marshall (1950) argues that there are three types of rights that are granted to citizens: civic-legal, social and political. Civic rights include the right to fair trial, right of association and freedom of speech. Social rights refer to the social benefits provided to citizens including health protection, unemployment benefit and pension. Political rights include the right to cast a vote and to run for elections. In the postwar era with the expansion of human rights on the one hand, and the increasing inter-state mobility which has forced nation-states to look after the conditions of immigrants, on the other, individual rights have been increasingly conceived as human rights, and recognized at the transnational level. These transformations have led to the emergence of a “post-national citizenship” (Soysal 1994), which involves the extension of many rights that were previously granted exclusively to national citizens to non-citizen immigrants. These developments however, have mainly occurred on the recognition of rights of the first two spheres, namely civic-legal and social rights.

In contrast, political rights have remained to a great extent rights that are exclusively granted to national citizens. Generally speaking immigrants can not hold public office, they don’t have the same rights in terms of their eligibility for representative bodies and can’t cast a voter. As Castles and Kosack put it “[t]he most serious form of discrimination against immigrant workers is their deprivation of political rights” (1972: 33).

In general, the political inclusion of immigrants is dependent on two factors: (1) the recognition of political rights to foreign residents, and (2) the attribution of national citizenship. First, the attribution of political rights to foreigners is not

systematic nor it is applied in a similar way across all democracies and groups.

Basically, it goes along with two distinctions made by national states: the type of election and immigrants’ country of origin (Table 5). On the one side, there is a distinction between local, regional, national and European elections. Whereas countries tend to be more liberal concerning political rights granted to immigrants on local, regional and even European elections, the right to participate in national elections remain almost an exclusive right of national citizens. This distinction results from the fact that national elections, and local or regional elections are perceived to have different hierarchies. National elections are first-order elections while local, regional and European elections are perceived to be second order elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980). First–order elections (parliamentary elections in parliamentary systems and presidential elections in presidential ones) have a great direct impact on national governments as in these elections voters decide who should govern the country. In contrast, second-order elections determine electoral outcomes to a lesser extent as these define fewer offices and have no direct impact on national government. Although, second-order elections serve voters and political parties as an arena to influence first-order elections, these are less relevant (Reif and Schmitt 1980: 8-9).

National elections are more influential in terms of defining a government, and because of that they are strongly linked to the core principle of modern electoral democracies of popular sovereignty. “Historically, the principle of nationalism has linked internal democracy with national self-determination, thus with territorially bounded and culturally integrated communities” (Soysal 2001: 164). In short, national elections are (more) related to the ideas of collective decisions making, representation of the interests of national citizens, and control of the rulers by the ruled (Balibar 2004:134).

Table 5.Voting Rights Granted to Immigrants and Citizens in Local, National and European Elections

Third Country EU Citizens Naturalized

Election Loc. Nat. EU Loc. Nat. EU Loc. Nat. EU

Austria ● ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Belgium ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Denmark ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Finland ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

France ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Germany ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Greece ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Ireland ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Italy ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Luxembourg ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Netherlands ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Portugal Some ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Spain LA* ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Sweden ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

United Kingdom C+I C+I C+I ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄

Source: Author’s own as of 2012. (▄) Political rights granted. (●) In 2002 the Social Democratic party in Vienna passed a law extending voting rights to all foreign residents that have lived in the country for more than five years. The regulation has never been applied in practice (Jenny 2011:51). C+I: in the United Kingdom Commonwealth and Irish citizens are granted political rights. LA* Voting rights are granted to some Latin-American migrants in Spain based on reciprocity. In Portugal these rights are granted to some migrants.

In this way, national citizenship that grants full access to political rights is an object enacting material and symbolic closure (Brubaker 1992:23), which like other institutions serve the purpose of delimiting the terms of associational and participatory life in modern nation-states (Soysal 2001:164).

Moreover, there is a distinction related to immigrants’ country of birth, which subdivides immigrants into different groups. The differentiation of immigrants based on country of origin is basically the result of the colonial history, inter-state agreements and integration policies implemented by individual states. Basically there are three major groups of immigrants: third country migrants, EU citizens and naturalized migrants.

Third country migrants are granted political rights only in few countries. Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom constitute some exceptions within the European Union. Third country migrants living in Belgium are allowed to vote in local elections since 2000 after 5 years of residence, yet they can’t stand as a candidate (Jakobs 2011:36). The Netherlands granted voting rights to immigrants in 1985, making it one of the first countries to recognized voting rights to immigrants in Europe. Third country nationals having resided in the country for more than 5 years automatically receive their voting card. Participation in local elections is not very difficult as it is not necessary to register to vote (Michon and Tillie 2011:33). Sweden remains one of the most liberal countries in Europe in terms of the recognition of political rights to immigrants. First, it granted voting rights to migrants in 1975, much earlier than many other countries. Second, foreign residents only need a residence period of three years to participate in municipal and county-elections. These features of Swedish democracy are related to the explicit goal of Swedish integration based on ideas of pluralism. These ideas also characterize other Nordic democracies like Norway (Bergh 2011:43) and

Denmark (Togeby 2011:45) and have been intended to foster the political incorporation of immigrants (Tahvilzadeh 2011:39).

Also, following its colonial history most of third country migrants to the United Kingdom came from Commonwealth countries, primarily from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean. Their political incorporation has been expansive and inclusive. The British Nationality Act of 1948 purposes that Commonwealth, Irish, and British nationals are treated similarly. As a result Commonwealth and Irish nationals enjoy voting rights for local, national and regional elections. Which also makes them a very privileged group in comparison to other immigrant groups in the United Kingdom and abroad.

Finally, in the context of the European Union integration, liberal democratic citizenship has been enriched with some transnational elements. A number of provisions introduced in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty including voting rights for EU residents in other European countries for local and European parliament elections (Article 8b) expanded some rights to EU citizens. Based on the reciprocity principle, EU citizens can vote and be candidates for local and European parliament elections. Yet, EU migrants are excluded from participating in national elections. To conclude, migrants having acquired the citizenship of the country where they reside become nationals in all terms, which grant them the same political rights enjoyed by the autochthonous population.