Can Immigrants be
Citizens?
What citizenship rights
can they rightfully claim?
The category of ‘citizen’
serves as a marker of identity, along with other categories such as race,
ethnicity and gender. Citizens are conferred with rights and privileges which
non-citizens mostly don’t have the benefit of availing. The idea of
‘citizenship’ itself has been a widely contested one as it delineates the
inclusion of certain members at the expense of excluding others. In his classic
essay "Citizenship and Social Class" (1998), T. H. Marshall traced
the expansion of citizenship in England
Political events in the
past half a century have made it even more contentious about who qualifies to
be a citizen and who doesn’t. At stake here now are the political rights of
recognition and assertion of identity, while simultaneously availing of the
benefits of social and civil aspects of citizenship. In the scenario of mass
movement of labour across geographical borders, the category of ‘citizen’
itself seems to have become quite superfluous. The scholarly thought on this
may want us to believe otherwise, though. Hence, this essay reviews selected
works in trying to present both sides of the debate. It begins with a brief
discussion on shifting notions of who qualifies to be a ‘citizen’, proceeding
to a review of some arguments on whether immigrants can be citizens. This is
followed by an evaluation of some arguments on the possibility of certain
rights which immigrants may claim as residents of a state.
Of ‘citizen’ and ‘citizenship
In lay understanding,
citizens are those members of a nation-state who have legal and political
rights. These rights are granted on the basis of numerous qualifying criteria
and instantly differentiate them from others who may be residing in the same
territory but don’t have these rights. On deliberation, it appears that every
geographical entity has its own criteria for granting recognition to residents
and these are, without exception, fraught with contesting claims. As Aristotle
stated,
The state is a compound
made of citizens; and this compels us to consider who should properly be called
a citizen and what a citizen really is. The nature of citizenship, like that of
the state, is a question which is often disputed: there is no general agreement
on a single definition: the man who is a citizen in a democracy is often not
one in an oligarchy (1941:1247).
Hence, the category of
‘citizen’ is not easily envisaged, understood and agreed upon. ‘Many key terms
in the interpretative social sciences and history - "race,"
"nation," "ethnicity," "citizenship,"
"democracy," "class," "community," and
"tradition," for example - are at once categories of social and
political practice and categories of social and political analysis’ (Brubaker
and Cooper 2000:4). According to them, ‘"Identity”
is both a category of practice and a category of analysis. Understood as a
specifically collective phenomenon, "identity" denotes a fundamental
and consequential sameness among members of a group or category’ (ibid.). This is true for the category of
‘citizen’ too. Those marked as citizens of a common territory automatically
share the same set of rights and obligations, irrespective of their differences
in other categories of distinctions. ‘Citizenship
is not a "natural" idea but an invented concept that shifts with
economic, political, and social changes. Citizenship, at least theoretically,
confers membership, identity, values, and rights of participation and assumes a
body of common political knowledge’ (Abowitz and Harnish 2006:653-4).
According to Brubaker, ‘modern national
citizenship was an invention of the French Revolution’ (1992:35).
In a democracy,
citizenship…
(a) gives membership
status to individuals within a political unit; (b) confers
an identity on
individuals; (c) constitutes a set of values, usually interpreted as a
commitment to the common good of a particular political unit; (d) involves
practicing a degree of participation in the process of political life; and (e)
implies gaining and using knowledge and understanding of laws, documents,
structures, and processes of governance (Enslin, 2000).
Can immigrants be
citizens?
Wallerstein argues that,
the
concept of citizen was intended to be inclusive-to insist that all persons in a
state, and not just some persons (a monarch, aristocrats) had the right to be
included in the process of collective
decision-making in the political arena and the right to receive the social
benefits the state might distribute. But the other face of the
inclusiveness of citizenship was exclusion. Those who were not citizens of the
state had become by definition aliens- citizens, perhaps, of some other state,
but not of this state (2003:651,
emphasis added).
In line with the
essentially exclusionary nature of citizenship, Walzer (1983) argues that if
national borders are not maintained as markers of a national community,
internal distinctions and demarcations will become more pronounced. The
admission and exclusion of immigrants, he suggests, is at the very core of
‘communal independence’. The sense of a common life, of a historically stable,
on-going association, and of a community with a special and mutual commitment
could not be maintained without such markers. If these national markers
weakened, internal boundaries would come to the fore to the point of insular
‘fortresses’ emerging (Walzer 1983:62-63). According to Klusmeyer, ‘every community determines its own identity-
morally, culturally, and politically- by whom it includes and by whom it
excludes. Throughout their history, Germans have had to face an especially
difficult and painful problem in drawing the boundaries of their national
community’ (1993:83). For Brubaker (1992), the state is an association of
citizens, and not just a territorially defined power and authority structure.
Yet, he argues that citizenship serves
‘a powerful instrument of social closure’,
in terms of the larger international community (1992:75). In his opinion, the
boundary of citizenship allows rich states to draw a line that separates its
citizens from potential immigrants from poor countries. It also allows states
to create internal boundaries that separate citizens from foreign residents, by
associating certain rights and privileges with national citizenship. Liberal
democracies are, following from this argument, ‘internally inclusive’ while remaining ‘externally exclusive’ (ibid. 21).
Bosniak
summarises this paradox in the following lines -
Citizenship, as we have
seen, trades in both universalism and particularism. From an internal perspective, the citizenship ideal is warm and
inclusive, extending, in theory, to embrace “everyone.” But this embrace is, in fact, circumscribed; the ideal
of citizenship, from a boundary-conscious perspective, is exclusive, demarcating not merely a class of
national community members but
also, in the process, a class of community outsiders. And since citizenship’s boundaries are not fully coextensive with
territorial borders but extend
into the national society’s interior, these two understandings of citizenship—the universal and the
exclusive—sometimes run up
against each other on the national inside (2006:102).
Klusmeyer
(1993) offers an excellent overview of the German problem of integration of
aliens and immigrants. The absence of a ‘general immigration policy’ (1993:85)
indicates that the state does not promote active influx of citizens from other
countries intending to settle there permanently. Nevertheless, the presence of
refugees and expellees from World War II, guest workers contributing to West
Germany’s phenomenal industrial growth and success, resident aliens, second/
third- generation immigrants and asylum seekers have all contributed to the ‘problem of integrating minorities (that) stands out as one of
the most pressing social and political challenges’ (1993:106) in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In the light of the above
discussion, I will now try and examine whether immigrants can be citizens by
shifting the attention to Walzer’s (1983) arguments. In ‘Spheres
of Justice’, Walzer outlines his argument for restricted migration by
comparing the nation-state scenario with that of a community’s functioning and
control of its own membership. He claims that the community alone decides on
admission to citizenship, emigration, exiling, and stripping citizenship away.
Secondly, the community ought to adopt a policy of inclusiveness: all of its
present inhabitants-immigrants, refugees, guest workers, and residents-should
be offered full membership because it is tyranny to rule over strangers. But
there are no standards for admission initially other than the ones the
community sets for itself (1983:36-39). While in the former claim Walzer is
vesting all rights on the members of a community, in the latter claim he is arguing
for inclusiveness. In developing his argument further, Walzer values membership
in a community and not simply citizenship in a state. In reality, political
states are geographical entities comprising of communities which may be strife
with differences within and without them. Yet, they are bound together by other
shared cultural beliefs and practices.
Walzer’s commitment to the concept of community shows itself in his
justification for autonomous control of membership but he identifies only the
barest minimum conditions for political unity, and not that of community. Hence
his argument may seem quite superfluous in terms of belonging to a community
where entry is restricted by social agreement.
According to Walzer, while
labour movements may be a result of market forces and availability of
opportunities, eventually, who gets inducted as a formal citizen is decided on
the basis of ‘kinship principle’ (ibid. 41)
which is given priority in the US. As he writes, ‘labour mobility has a social price’ (ibid. 41). Walzer’s arguments imply that the state (akin to a
community) has a choice to decide who’s inducted and who’s not, which leads us
to be believe that he’s making a subtle case for immigration with a restrictive
border. This is countered by Carens who in ‘Aliens
and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’ (1987) goes all out to make a case
for open borders and free movement. He uses the arguments of other contemporary
schools of political thought to supplement his argument for open borders. Using
Nozick’s (1974) argument for property rights, Carens states that at one level
it may seem that citizens may not immigrate because of collective property
rights held in their native land. Carens points out that Nozickian theories emphasize individual, not collective, rights that may
be enforced by the state. ‘[T]he control that the state can
legitimately exercise over [its] land is limited to the enforcement of the
rights of individual owners. Prohibiting people from entering a territory
because they did not happen to be born there or otherwise gain the credentials
of citizenship is no part of any states legitimate mandate’ (Carens
1987:254). So Nozick’s approach, Carens concludes, cannot support restrictions
on migration.
From
Rawls’ theory, Carens draws that one should ‘take a global, not a national, view of the original position’
(Carens 1987:256). Given this, Carens argues that people in the original
position would select a principle of international justice that protected the
right to free movement, because migration might prove essential to their life
plans. Thus, Carens concluded that a Rawlsian perspective also suggests that
free movement is a fundamental liberty. Carens proceeds to draw his arguments
from utilitarianism, which despite its many internal disagreements against
immigration, also points toward considerably more open borders. This is
because, Carens argues, regardless of whether one considers only economic
factors or also other ones, such as cultural interests or even mere prejudices
- the utility of aliens must be weighed equally with that of citizens, which
would undoubtedly tip the scales in the direction of free movement.
Under
current conditions, when so many millions of poor and oppressed people feel
they have so much to gain from migration to the advanced industrial states, it
seems hard to believe that a utilitarian calculus which took the interests of
aliens seriously would justify significantly greater limits on immigration than
the ones entailed by the public order restriction implied by the Rawlsian
approach (Carens 1987:264).
While these three theories
may originally appear to not be in favour of unregulated migration, Carens
skilfully extracts from them nuances and then builds upon them to support his
own grand proposition for more openness of borders. Beyond this, Carens
dismisses Walzer’s argument for restricted movement stating - ‘any approach like
Walzer's that seeks its ground in the tradition and culture of our community
must confront, as a methodological paradox, the fact that liberalism is a
central part of our culture’ (1987:268-9). Carens does admit that open
borders would indeed prevent certain ways of life from continuing, but he
qualifies this by adding that ‘constraining the kinds of choices that people
and communities may make is what principles of justice are for’ (ibid.:271). To conclude, Carens
arguments for open borders seems, for the lack of a better word, quite
restrictive. His claims are all grounded in examples from the US
It is impossible to offer
a neat response to our original question of whether immigrants can be citizens.
Kymlicka and Norman point out that when thinking about citizenship today, ‘the
complex webs of rights and responsibilities implicating citizens in various
ethical, political and social decisions are important to keep in mind’
(2000:15). They argue that,
while citizens everywhere
may be contained legally within state boundaries that enact rights and
obligations, their own states are not subject to such containment. All states,
through multilateral arrangements and international accords, implicate (or fail
to implicate) their citizens involuntarily in a web of rights and
responsibilities concerning the environment (wildlife, pollution), trade
(copyright, protection), security, refugees, crime, minorities, war, children
and many other issues (ibid.).
What complicates the issue
further is that ‘many citizens and
non-citizens (illegal aliens, immigrants, migrants) of states have become
increasingly mobile, carrying these webs of rights and obligations with them
and further entangling them with other webs of rights and obligations’ (ibid). Hence, it becomes imperative to
explore what rights such aliens and immigrants can claim in the scenario of
increased mobility across borders, either sanctioned or illegal.
Immigrants and citizenship rights
It may seem antithetical
to use ‘immigrants’ and ‘citizenship rights’ in the same phrase. From the
discussion above, it is evident that any move to upgrade the status of
‘immigrants’ to that of ‘citizens’ and granting them rights enjoyed by other
citizens is deeply contested on various moral, political, cultural and economic
grounds. In this section, I explore some of the rights that immigrants wish to
attain but are usually denied.
‘Since the founding of the United States
Bosniak (1998) discusses
how the figure of the alien is constantly being devalued in the US
Howard (2006) discusses in
detail why national citizenship is still important despite ‘the broader umbrella of ‘European
citizenship’ since it ‘is itself strictly derivative of national citizenship’
(2006:445). Most of these claims by non-citizens of EU (aliens or immigrants)
essentially relate to political rights (eligibility to context elections and
vote) and also their exclusion from receiving social benefits (ibid.). ‘Whether in terms of politics and elections, welfare state benefits,
public-sector employment, social integration, or demographics and pension
systems, national citizenship remains an
essential and enduring feature of modern life-even in the
"supra-national" European Union’ (ibid.:446).
It is these rights that immigrants aim to claim in return of the services
offered to their host nation, not to mention especially by second and third
generation immigrants,
The rights that immigrants
can claim depend on multiple factors. Their ethnic and cultural background,
family size and needs, current economic status and the aspired standard of
living, desire to forge bonds with the community via participation in political
processes are among some of the variables that may lead to immigrants pressing
for attainment of rights closer to those of citizens, if not entirely equal.
Conclusion
Scholars like Kymlicka and
Norman (2000) have argued for incorporating the changes brought about by
transnational migration and multiculturalism. Though, the detractors are not
far away. Huntington (2004) ominously warns of
the ‘Hispanic Challenge’ to the US US
Providing a more rational opinion, on the basis of
analysing statistical data from Mexico, Spain , US and Armenia, Rhodes and
Harutyunyan ‘suggest that the political
logic of emigrant citizenship in recent decades is similar to that affecting
the extension of citizenship to groups that were excluded in the past (such as
such as those without property, racial minorities, and women). Demand for
ever-increasing inclusiveness seems to be almost an inherent feature of
competitive regimes’ (2010:488).
To conclude,
The health and stability
of a modern democracy depends, not only on the justice of its institutions, but
also on the qualities and attitudes of its citizens: e.g. their sense of
identity, and how they view potentially competing forms of national, regional,
ethnic, or religious identities; their ability to tolerate and work together
with others who are different from themselves; their desire to participate in
the political process in order to promote the public good and hold political
authorities accountable; their willingness to show self-restraint and exercise
personal responsibility in their economic demands, and in personal choices that
affect their health and the environment; and their sense of justice and
commitment to a fair distribution of resources (Kymlicka and Norman 2000:5-6).
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