The Democratic Potential of Enfranchising Resident Migrants

The Dynamics of Migration and Settlement in Europe, 2006

Citizenship has emerged only recently as an important topic of research on migration and migrant integration. Before the late 1980s there was little connection between migration research and the legal literature on nationality laws or political theories and sociological analyses of citizenship in a broader sense. In traditional overseas countries of immigration immigrants' access to citizenship and eventual naturalisation was taken for granted as a step in a broader process of assimilation, while in Europe the largest immigration contingents had emerged from the recruitment of guest workers who had been invited to stay only temporarily and were never perceived as future citizens. Both expectations were eventually undermined when the dynamics of the migration process interacted with political developments to generate more inclusive conceptions of citizenship. Family reunification turned guest workers into settled immigrants. Many among these, however, maintained strong ties to their countries of origin. For these migrants, retaining the nationality of origin was a natural choice both for its instrumental value as a bundle of rights and for its symbolic value as a marker of ethno-national identity. At the same time, the rights of permanent residents in major democratic receiving states were upgraded in many areas or even equalised with those of citizens. Finally, more and more countries of immigration abandoned the consensus in international law that those who naturalise have to renounce their previous nationality and a growing number of sending countries also accepted multiple nationality among their expatriates. All these developments have blurred the previously bright line separating aliens from citizens. While some observers welcomed these trends as heralding a new cosmopolitan era in which state-bound citizenship would eventually be overcome, others were concerned about migrants' multiple loyalties, their apparent free ride on citizenship rights without corresponding duties and about the political mobilisation of ethnic or religious identities.

coe.int

Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 2013

This article deals with the civic integration of migrants, focusing on the process immigrants undergo to become nationals of new states. Discussing some recent advances in immigration policies in European Union countries, it questions the gap that separates their normative principles from institutional practices. Many existing citizens would not meet the administrative requirements imposed on migrants to gain legal residence and nationality. Further- more, the experience of non-nationals living in Europe suggests that integration challenges remain, well after naturalisation is achieved, as new citizens face ongoing discriminatory burdens at various levels, including the labour market and politics. Part of an ongoing study on the civic condition of migrants, the article argues that a liberal approach to immigrant integration should not cease with the granting of citizenship. It should address the urgent task of protecting new citizens from discrimination that impairs their rights in practice.

The background idea in this essay is that as migration is a constant of civilization, we are all migrants. We have however witnessed, over the past thirty years, the progressive devaluation of asylum. At first an immemorial tradition, asylum has recently been construed as a potential threat to national security and we are moving towards a securitized control of migration movements. Migrants have rights and the respect, fulfillment, protection and promotion of the rights of migrants, as they relate to the rights of citizens, is the next frontier in terms of human rights policies. Ultimately, we shall need to think about a re-conceptualization of citizenship, in order the recognize the presence of all "foreigners" in terms of their administrative status.

nccr - on the move, National Center of Competence in Research - The Migration-Mobility Nexus (Policy Briefs "in a nutshell"), 2021

Increasing international mobility has led to the situation that growing parts of local populations in Europe are residents without voting rights – a situation that presents a deficit in countries with a democratic system. This policy brief introduces activist groups and policy demands in Swiss and European cities that advocate an extension of local voting rights for non-national residents. Available at: https://nccr-onthemove.ch/what-are-current-demands-for-more-inclusive-voting-rights-in-migration-societies/

2009

The boundaries of democracy are typically defined by the boundaries of formal status citizenship. Such state-centered theories of democracy leave many migrants without a voice in political decision-making in the areas where they live and work, giving rise to a problem of democratic legitimacy. Drawing on two democratic principles of inclusion, the all affected interests and coercion principles, this article elaborates this problem and examines two responses offered by scholars of citizenship for what receiving states might do. The first approach involves expanding the circle of citizenship to include resident noncitizens. A second approach involves disaggregating the rights conventionally associated with citizenship from the legal status of citizenship and extending some of those rights, including voting rights, to resident noncitizens. This article argues that both approaches fall short of satisfying the democratic principles of inclusion, which call for enfranchising individuals not only beyond the boundaries of citizenship but also beyond territorial boundaries.

Political Geography, 2004

Each of the books reviewed in this essay addresses a fundamental question: "What is citizenship?" and places this question within the broader context of a changing world in which international migration is a distinguishing feature. Each has a different focus, however, which can be placed along a spectrum of inquiry. From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World (2000), edited by T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, places historical and contemporary citizenship and naturalization policies in comparative international perspective. Immigration and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century (1998), edited by Noah M. Pickus, specifically addresses the changing institution of formal citizenship in the United States. And the third volume, Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging (2000), co-authored by Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson, questions the territorial assumptions which undergird formal citizenship and discusses how political membership is being challenged in the context of increasing transnational migrant flows. In other words, Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer engage actually-existing citizenships around the world, Pickus and the authors in his volume explore what US citizenship can or should be, and Castles and Davidson fundamentally question citizenship as a political identity grounded in the nation-state in an increasingly global context. From Migrants to Citizens, edited by Aleinikoff, a prominent legal scholar who publishes frequently on citizenship and naturalization policy, and Klusmeyer, a comparative citizenship and migration policy analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is the first book is a three-part series published by the Carnegie Endowment on the subject of citizenship and migration in a changing world. While the second and third volumes, Citizenship Today: Perspectives and Practices (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, 2001), and Citizenship Policies for an Age of Migration (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, 2002) identify challenges to the institution of citizenship at a time of mass migration and develop policy recommendations to answer these

The main aim of this publication is to raise awareness on the granting of voting rights to migrants with the aid of an in-depth sociological study conducted in the spring of 2014 as part of the project “The analysis of the process of granting voting rights to migrants – selected examples from across the EU”. The project was carried out by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the University of Warsaw (UW). The study addressed Poland and covered the analysis of the attitude of immigrants and representatives of Polish society to the possibility of expanding voting rights at the local level to foreigners from outside the European Union who have remained, legally and continuously, in Poland for a longer period of time, in particular on the basis of either a permanent residence permit or long-term resident’s EU residence permit. Thus, the focus of our interest was not all immigrants in Poland, but third country nationals (TCN) residing permanently in our country. The study aimed to determine whether public opinion and public administration in Poland are ready for the introduction of new legal solutions in electoral law. We were also exploring the perspective of people from migrant communities themselves, especially the level and ways in which they were interested in gaining such rights. However, in our study we paid more attention to the role of public administration, as it shapes the legal framework of the political participation of foreigners. We compared the results of our study with the practices of other EU Member States that have extended voting rights at the local level to TCNs. This allowed us to place the acquired study data on social attitudes and legal problems in a wider European context. We were also able to compare visions and fears related to the electoral enfranchisement of migrants with the actual process in places where it has already taken place.

Mexican Law Review, 2017

Abstract: This article asserts that according to international law, immigrants do have rights as a minority, and in abiding by their international obligations, States are obligated to implement policies that safeguard these rights and, in this way, facilitate the integration of immigrants into the host society. However , there are a number of elements that make the practical enforcement of these rights and the implementation of such policies rather complex. Thus, a series of international law provisions are first reviewed so as to be able to establish the foundations of our views. Secondly, we summarize and analyze the main trends of integration policies in three of the main Western immigration countries: Canada, the United States and the Netherlands, in order to broadly present the actions and results. Lastly, we conclude that immigrant integration projects fail to respect immigrants' rights as a minority and that more effort should be made to comply with the international obligations States have assumed Resumen: Este artículo sostiene que, de acuerdo con el derecho internacional, los inmigrantes tienen derechos como minoría, y que los Estados, de conformi-dad con sus obligaciones internacionales, están obligados a implementar políti-cas que aseguren estos derechos y, en este sentido, faciliten su integración en las sociedades de acogida. Sin embargo, hay un número de elementos que hacen que el cumplimiento práctico de estos derechos y la aplicación de dichas políticas sea compleja. Entonces, primero, se revisa una serie de disposiciones de derecho internacional con el fin de establecer las bases para apoyar nuestras posturas. Segundo, resumimos y analizamos las principales tendencias en las políticas de integración de tres de los países occidentales más importantes de inmigración: Canadá, Estados Unidos y Países Bajos, con el fin de presentar grosso modo las acciones y los resultados. Finalmente, concluimos que los proyectos de in-tegración de los inmigrantes fallan en respetar los derechos de los inmigrantes como minoría y que se deben realizar mayores esfuerzos con el fin de cumplir con las obligaciones internacionales que los Estados han adquirido.