In her opinion for Daily Maverick, Claudia Pizzocri explores how different democracies are once again grappling with that question. From Aristotle’s polis to contemporary developments in the United States, Italy, Spain and South Africa, the article considers how the legal expressions of belonging continue to evolve while the underlying question remains unchanged.
As debates around citizenship, migration and national identity become increasingly polarised, perhaps the greatest misconception is that citizenship is principally about migration. Historically, it has always been about membership.
Read the opinion as published on Daily Maverick here.
Some extracts below:
For more than 2,000 years citizenship has represented society’s answer to one of its oldest and most enduring questions: who belongs?
Perhaps the greatest modern misconception is that citizenship is principally about migration. Historically, it has mostly been about membership. Migration concerns movement across borders. Citizenship determines membership of the national community. Citizenship is ultimately society’s way of deciding who holds a stake in its future. Unsurprisingly, every society has answered that question differently.
The history of citizenship is therefore not the history of a single legal identifier gradually replacing another. It is the history of societies continually searching for legal expressions of belonging, through participation, birth, descent and increasingly through integration.
The 21st century has brought renewed urgency to that enduring enquiry. Globalisation has not altered the question of who belongs, but it has required democracies to confront it more frequently. As transnational mobility and diaspora communities have become increasingly significant features of modern society, long-established legal markers of membership have come under renewed examination.
Across jurisdictions, an emerging pattern has become difficult to ignore. Countries that appeared settled in their approaches to citizenship are once again examining the assumptions that have long underpinned nationality law. Is birth alone sufficient? Can citizenship by descent extend indefinitely across generations? Does prolonged residence necessarily establish membership? To what extent should participation, integration or an enduring connection with the state influence the recognition of citizenship?
It is within this broader context that the contemporary experiences of the US, Italy, Spain and, increasingly, South Africa become particularly instructive.
by Claudia Pizzocri, at Eisenberg & Associates Inc.