CITIZENSHIP AS A STATENESS BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE REGIME: THE CURIOUS CASE OF LITHUANIAN DUAL CITIZENSHIP

dual citizenship;identitarian dimension of citizenship;Central and Eastern Europe;EU conditionality;liberalization/ convergence thesis;stateness;Political Science

Verseckaite, EgleHung, Ho-fung ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: dual citizenship;    identitarian dimension of citizenship;    Central and Eastern Europe;    EU conditionality;    liberalization/ convergence thesis;    stateness;    Political Science;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60522/VERSECKAITE-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

In November 2006, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania struck down the Law on Citizenship which allowed dual citizenship for ethnic Lithuanian emigrants, but not for representatives of ethnic minorities who have emigrated to their kin-states, as a case of ethnic discrimination. However, instead of expanding the availability of dual citizenship to ethnic minority migrants, the Constitutional Court ruled that widespread dual citizenship is unconstitutional and undesirable. Such a ruling went not only against the preferences of the Lithuanian general public, minorities, and politicians, but also against the predictions of mainstream citizenship studies which presume that an emigration country would seek to expand rather than curtail dual citizenship for its diaspora, and that European integration is supposed to make postcommunist countries more inclusive. This empirical puzzle prompted an inquiry into the approach dominating the field of citizenship studies – the twin liberalization/ convergence theses. The convergence thesis suggests that citizenship regulation is becoming similar accross different countries, especially in Europe, and the liberalization thesis suggests that this convergence is moving in the direction of greater accessibility of citizenship, including expanded opportunities for dual citizenship, expansion of rights for migrants, and a decline of the importance of identitarian criteria for ascription of citizenship. I challenge this thesis by noting how the decoupling of rights from citizenship unintentionally re-emphasizes its identitarian dimension. I analyze public discourse, parliamentary proceedings, and Constitutional Court rulings, and conclude that Lithuania;;s unexpected restrictive turn is a result of the combination of contradictory influence of the international norms and the enduring concerns with stateness – the requirement for a state to have a clearly established territory and citizenry. On the basis of the case findings, I conceptualize citizenship as a boundary maintenance mechanism in reaction to the combination of concerns with stateness and the international norms which both delegitimize and reinforce the identitarian dimension of citizenship, and set out to test whether it has comparative purchase outside of the postcommunist region. An overview of dual citizenship regulations and discourse in different regions supports my argument that, even if there is a nominal upward trend in availability of dual citizenship, its identitarian dimension overshadows the instrumental dimension and is intermeshed with the use of citizenship to maintain the boundary of stateness. Although studies of democratic transition have relegated stateness issues to the postcommunist world, I demonstrate that it is relevant not only for a postcolonial country that has experienced foreign domination, but also for established Western states due to the pressures of globalization and migration.