MICH: On Naturalization: Citizenship Beyond Residence

Camille PASCAL (ISP/chaire Hoover)
Acquiring citizenship for immigrants, or being naturalized, signifies being legally recognized as a member of the society. Immigrants have to fulfill a series of formal requirements in order to be granted citizenship. In particular, they have to prove their residency in the country: only people who live in the state can be considered as members of the society and can then claim for citizenship. However, migration across borders has given rise to new kinds of membership “beyond residence”. From this factual observation, I argue that physical presence, if it has been repeated over time, is sufficient to give rise to membership to the state and should therefore motivate rethinking our conception of citizenship independently of residence. I show that significant differences remain between members and non-members of a state but that the place of residence has a marginal role in that differentiation. I explain this by distinguishing between the boundaries of citizenship, which delineate individuals’ membership to a state, and the territorial borders that delineate a state’s jurisdiction. The former, which include some non-residents in the polity, are often not identical to the latter. The main contribution of my paper is then to argue in favor of a non-residential conception of citizenship that doesn’t undermine our current practice of state sovereignty and territorial organization, but that doesn’t reduce membership to a state’s territory.