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Article 15(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("UDHR") proclaims that no one can be "denied the right to change his nationality." Following the UDHR's promulgation in 1948, the general right to have a citizenship, and thus to preclude statelessness, was developed substantially through several major international agreements. However, the right to renounce citizenship--implicit in the UDHR's explicit promise of "the right to change" nationality--remained underdeveloped. This Note surveys the contemporary state of the norm. Despite broad recognition in national laws of a right to renounce citizenship, no international treaty defines the norm. Some countries impose conditions on renouncing citizenship, both procedural steps and substantive conditions such as continuing obligations to pay taxes and to perform compulsory military. This Note proposes that there is a customary international law core to the right to renounce citizenship, with reference to the state practice of certain lead jurisdictions: The United States, Singapore, India, European countries, Brazil, Russia, China, and Japan. This Note also touches upon the related topic of dual citizenship--a person's "right to change" nationality by adding one or more nationalities to the one he or she presently holds. In concluding, this Note makes predictions and suggestions for the future. The right to renounce citizenship is particularly salient today, both in the United States specifically given drastic political polarization, and globally, as a wealthy class of transnational persons engage in citizenship forumshopping for such reasons as avoidance of taxes and military service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article probes the contradictions and unacknowledged risks inherent in the notion of citizenship today. We explore the possible fault lines that citizenship places on the notion of universality, namely the anthropology of contexts in which citizenship and biological self-preservation are being radically decoupled as well as the policies, techniques, and media (biological, health, juridical) through which such decoupling takes place. What concepts have anthropologists brought to the fore to address the emerging 'fault lines of survival' embodied in the term citizenship? How have these concepts been taken up, becoming vehicles for resisting, or at least assessing, what has become of citizenship? Moving beyond narrowly conceptualized policy problems and calculations, this article also considers alternative pathways through which the 'political' is being mobilized and through which a new politics of rescue appears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple and dual citizenship in the past decades have become widely accepted worldwide. Leading scholars in citizenship studies claim that the growing tolerance of dual citizenship signals the weakening of state sovereignty and the emergence of transnational, post-national or cosmopolitan norms. This paper argues that multiple citizenship standards are neither universally accepted, nor normatively compelling. The cases referred to are intended to demonstrate that contrary to the above assessments, dual citizenship is also used by states to increase their sovereignty, for example promoting national interest abroad through expatriates and trans-border minorities. It is also argued that, in addition to the classical territorial sovereignty- and security-related dilemmas, dual-citizenship policies may violate the norms of democratic equality and popular sovereignty. The paper concludes that the inevitably growing toleration of non-monogamous state-citizen relationships should not be interpreted as a normative justification of promiscuous citizenship policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past three decades, relations between African emigrants and their home-states have been changing from antagonism to attempts to embrace and structure emigrant behaviors. This transformation in the conception of emigration and citizenship has hardly been interrogated by the growing scholarship on African and global migrations. Three of the most contentious strategies to extend the frontiers of loyalty of otherwise weak African states, namely dual citizenship or dual nationality, the right to vote from overseas, and the right to run for public office by emigrants from foreign locations are explored. Evidence from a wide range of African emigration states suggests that these strategies are neither an embrace of the global trend toward extra-territorialized states and shared citizenship between those at 'home' and others outside the state boundaries, nor are they about national development or diaspora welfare. Instead, they seem to be strategies to tap into emigrant resources to enhance weakened state power. The study interrogates the viability and advisability of emigrant voting and political participation from foreign locations, stressing their tendency to destabilize homeland political power structures, undermine the nurturing of effective diaspora mobilization platforms in both home and host states, and export homeland political practices to diaspora locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple citizenship has in recent decades moved from an unwanted phenomenon in international relations to a fairly common transnational status. Multiple citizenship has nevertheless so far been studied mainly as a political and juridical status by comparing national legislations. Much less notice has been given to actual dual citizens' citizen participation and construction of citizens' identities. Only when citizenship is studied as these kinds of practices do the hypothetic possibilities and problems associated with the status get their meanings and contents. This paper concentrates on examining dual citizens' identifications to their respective citizenships and how these affiliations transfer into possible citizen participation. Results are based on extensive analysis of survey (n = 335) and interviews (n = 48) carried out among dual citizens living in Finland. Contents and forms of dual citizens' national identification and citizen participation were reviewed through ideal types: resident-mononationals, expatriate-mononationals, hyphenationals, and shadow-nationals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses market citizenship in European Union (EU) Member States, which in 2010 is already seen as a more State-like citizenship that is seen in the reduced meaningfulness of economic self-sufficiency. EU citizenship was born through the Maastricht Treaty with an idea of having polity integration and at the same time include some emotional features of a citizenship. Article 26 TFEU (ex 14 EC) provided that ideology behind EU market citizenship which aims to create an area where there is free movement of goods, persons and services.

This paper is concerned with migration across national borders but within state boundaries; specifically, movement between England and Scotland. It focuses on an under-researched area—the medium-term migration behaviour and motivations of graduates—within a demographic and political context where there is a premium on the attraction of highly qualified migrants. It examines the potential influence of national identities upon migration and long-term settlement among this group. The status of 'English' graduate migrants as an 'audible minority' in Scotland is highlighted. Identification and affinity with Scotland are widespread, and can be developed through a number of routes, thus indicating a positive potential for turning 'migrants' into 'settlers' in order to meet demographic and political objectives. However, there are also significant barriers to belonging which relate to the national identities of migrants. This shows that incongruity between formal citizenship and belonging may be a significant feature not only for those who migrate between states, but also for migrants who cross national borders within the same state, and this in turn may influence their future migration decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the increasing practice of dual citizenship and absentee voting being approved by several countries which have become a key element in a global perpetual migration machine. Background of the ruling of the U.S. on its citizens who hold dual citizenship; Other countries which permit its citizens to have dual citizenship; Controversies which show how the issue of national identity has become entangled with the practical issues that arise from global dependence on a perpetual migration machine.

Features Mary Sheepshanks, the pacifist socialist feminist and editor of jus suffragii which highlights the division between early twentieth-century feminist concerning the aims of suffrage and the internationalism of an international movement. Impact of World War I; Issue of being a suffragist; Discussion on equal educational access and employment rights of every married woman to choose her nationality including the abolition in every country of state regulation of prostitution.

The two foundational subjects for membership in the modern nation- state, the citizen and the alien, are undergoing significant changes in the current moment This becomes particularly evident in certain types of contexts foremost, among which are cities. These can be seen as productive spaces for informal or not-yet-formalized politics and subjects. In this examination of emergent possibilities, I first outline these changes vis-à-vis nationality and citizenship. Second, I dissect notions of national membership in order to create a set of tools for reconstructing citizenship analytically. In the third section, I delineate two key, incipient kinds of repositioned membership: unauthorized yet recognized subjects, and authorized yet unrecognized subjects. Fourth, I situate these repositionings within contemporary currents of citizenship theory. In the final section, I theorize the landscape of the global city as an especially salient site for the repositioning of citizenship in practice. At the scale of the city, and the particular urban space of the global city, there are dynamics that signal the possibilities for a politics of membership that is simultaneously localized and transnational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]