A Theory of Citizenship Rights

The question of immigrants’ access to citizenship and the attendant right of political participation remains a major challenge for contemporary democracies. In contemporary democratic states, only “full members” of the society are granted with citizenship. Criteria for full membership differ, and the notion is ambiguously employed in the literature to designate both one’s social links to a country and one’s propensity to identify with a given nationality. It has become received wisdom that permanent residence in the state is necessary for immigrants to become full members of the society and thereby acquire citizenship. However, several sociological studies have shown that the social and psychological facts which comprise full membership may vary independently of residence. Such evidence suggests that numerous immigrants are wrongly denied citizenship. Several attempts – at finding a better grounding for determining immigrant’s full membership – are compared and evaluated. A new criterion is then proposed based on Dewey’s notion of the public. Citizenship is traditionally considered a protective and safe membership status. The second part of this paper argues that some citizenship statuses such as naturalized citizenship and citizenship of dual nationals do not represent a secure and stable ground for rights. In particular, this work focuses on discussing citizenship deprivation in liberal democracies