POST-NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP:

RIGHTS & OBLIGATIONS OF

INDIVIDUALITY
Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal

April Eloise M. Borja

Kate Eloise P. Esber
 Outline of Presentation

• Rights and Identity

• Claims-making and Mobilization: The Practice of Citizenship

• The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of Citizenship

• Coda: Delimiting the Contours of Post-national Citizenship

• Postwar Era
• “Human Rights“
• Right and Identity
• Post-National Citizenship
• Dichotomy between nationals and aliens
• Sosyal
• Nation-State
• Paradoxical and contradictory process (y contradictory
process?)
• Citizenship (1990s)
• Marshallian concept of citizenship
• Growing literature on immigration and citizenship

• Immigration provides a productive view point to study

citizenship

• Our theories are stubborn in assigning the nation-state a

privileged position as a unit of analysis, even when
conversing about global processes such as immigration
• Modern Citizenship
• posit that populations are organized within nation-state boundaries by
citizenship rules that acclaim ‘national belonging’ as the legitimate basis of
membership
Two foundational principles define national citizenship:
 a congruence between territorial state and the national community
national belonging as the source of rights and duties of individuals as
well as their collective identity

• National Citizenship
• is a territorially bounded population with a specific set of rights and duties,
excluding others on the ground of nationality.
• Codification of ‘Human Rights’
• Shift in the conceptualization of rights
• Individual rights
• Principle of Human Rights

• Multi-level Polities
• Creates new opportunities for mobilizing and advancing demands within and
beyond national boundaries
• Implications on rights and identity
• Organization and practice of citizenship

Citizenship is a poor predictor of the distribution of rights and

privileges
 Rights and Identity

• Authoritative discourse of individual rights has been instrumental in

the formalization and expansion of many citizenship rights
• Extension of various membership rights

• Model of national citizenship

• was dominant during the massive migrations at the turn of the century

• Post-war Immigration Experience

• reflects a time when national citizenship has lost ground to new forms of
citizenship
 Rights and Identity

Membership rights of non-citizen immigrants:

• full civil rights (equality)
• social rights (education)
• some political rights (voting)

• Emerging European system

As the source and legitimacy of rights increasingly shift to the

transnational level, identities in the main remain particularistic and
locally defined and organized
 Rights and Identity
While rights acquire a more universalistic form and are divorced from
national belonging, at the same time identities become particularistic
and expressive

• Decoupling of rights and identity

Individuals obtain rights and protection, and thus membership, within

states that are not ‘their own’

• Nation
• Is still the source of a pronounced distinctiveness
 Rights and Identity

• Right to ‘one’s own culture’ and identity

• Massive decolonization in the post-war period
• International Organizations
• UNESCO
• Council of Europe

• Identities
• occupy a vital place in individual and collective actors’ narratives and
strategies
Claims-making and Mobilization: The Practice of Citizenship

• Post-war reconfiguration in citizenship along with dissociation of

rights and identity become blurred

Two features of emerging forms:

 while collective groups increasingly rally around claims for
particularistic identities, they connect their claims to transnationally
institutionalized discourses and agendas
the organizational strategies employed by collective groups acquire a
transnational and sub-national character, along with national ones
Claims-making and Mobilization: The Practice of Citizenship

1st feature
• Immigrant groups in Europe
• advance claims for group-specific provisions
• emphasize their group identities
• claims are not simply grounded in the particularities of religious or ethnic
narratives
• they appeal to the universalistic principles and dominant discourses of equality,
emancipation and individual rights

Immigrants advance claims for difference that are affirmed by

universalistic and homogenizing ideologies of human rights
Claims-making and Mobilization: The Practice of Citizenship

2nd feature
• participation extends beyond the confines of a unitary national community
• covers multiple localities and transnationally connects public spheres

• Immigrant groups
• we find political parties, mosque organizations and community associations
that operate at local levels but also assume transnational forms by bridging
diverse public spaces

Public spheres within which immigrants act, mobilize, and advance claims
have broadened
Claims-making and Mobilization: The Practice of Citizenship

2nd feature
• Immigrant groups
• they appeal to the universalistic principles of human rights and connect to a
diverse set of public spheres
• their mobilization is not simply a reinvention of cultural particularism

The emerging forms of collective participation and claims-making in Europe

are less and less nationally defined citizenship projects

• Post-national Citizenship
• It signifies a set of practices through which individuals and groups activate
their membership within and without the nation-state
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

How does post-national citizenship fare against the current

landscape of European policy, particularly in the field of
immigration?
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• ‘Selective migration’ and ‘integration’ constitute the core facets of the new
orientation.

• Common Immigration Policy Framework – formalized in the 1999 Tampere

meeting; strongly prioritize ‘integration’ and ‘social cohesion’, while facilitating
the mobility of skilled labour within and without the EU

• Most European countries set further limitations on unskilled labour migration

(including family reunification), while welcoming students, scientists, specialist
professionals and entrepreneurs.
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• Several countries (notably, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands

and the UK) have also introduced legislation

• Access to social benefits

• Citizenship and integration tests are compulsory on the route to naturalization

• Once considered a US idiosyncrasy, citizenship tests and oath-taking are now

touted as indispensable steps towards integration throughout Europe.
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• Integration and selective migration proffer a convenient language to reclaim

‘national boundaries’ in a climate where electoral opinion is adversarial to
immigration.

• The current citizenship and integration tests do not reveal anything distinctive
about the particularities of the nation or a distinct philosophy of integration

• notions of individual rights and democracy.

The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• History Questions
• Questions to appraise values
• Rights of the individual
• Rights of the under privileged sections of society

• The British test, ‘Life in the UK: A Journey to Citizenship’

The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• The German Citizenship Test

• ‘Which religion marked German and European culture? ‘
• ‘What is the German traditional activity for painting eggs?’
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

Integration, is not a nation-centred project.

• Integration acquires the purpose of achieving social cohesion

driven by active, participatory and productive individuals.

The new European immigration agenda is a continuum of the

broader trends that underscore the transformation of citizenship
in the postwar era.
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• The New Social Project

• ‘a passive providing state’
• ‘self-activity, responsibility and mobilization’

• Education
• Math
• Language
• Science
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• Civics and citizenship teachings in schools

• projects ‘cosmopolitan’ individuals

• The trust in the value of individuality and its transformative

capacity
• ‘good citizen’
• ‘good society’
The Value of ‘Individuality’ as the Underlying Principle of
Citizenship

• Individuality
• elicits the recognition of universal qualities
• enhancement of universal freedoms and rights

• Made possible the expansion of the boundaries of citizenship in the postwar

Europe.

Realizing self potential becomes a right and a responsibility, and forms

expectations about the self and others.

• Economic And Political Liberalization

Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

1 Post-national citizenship does not

refer to an identity or a unitary legal
status
 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

• Analytical Concept
• Institutions of Rights and Identity
• locate citizenship and its practice in increasingly transnational discourses and
multiple public spheres

It does not mark the emergence of a legal status or identity at

the world level, ascribed by a single, unified political and judicial
structure.
 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

• Membership Forms And Identities

• ‘Transnational Communities’
• International Transportation
• Communication Technologies

Post-national citizenship does not imply the necessary advent of

transnational solidarities or communal bonds, or the formation of
‘diasporic’ identities and interests.
Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

2 Post-national citizenship does not

imply the ‘withering of the nation-
state’ or the declining purpose of
the state
 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

The transnational normative and institutional domain does not

necessarily host a harmonious and coherent rule system.

• Heterogeneous Set Of Principles

• The Principles Of Human Rights And Nation-state Sovereignty

The nation-state continues to be the repository of cultures of

nationhood and institutions through which rights and membership
policies are implemented
Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

Post-national citizenship is not in

3
itself a normative prescription and
should not be superfluously
conflated with theoretical positions
such as cosmopolitanism that
profess a moral commitment to the
transformative capabilities of
universal values
 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

Post-national citizenship presume public spheres free of conflict or

devoid of exclusions

Post-national citizenship reveals an ongoing process of definition

and redefinition of rights and participation.

• Formal nationality status

 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

• Rights
• Membership
• Participation

• Global Dominance Of The Ideologies

• Institutions Of Liberal Individualism
• enable various groups in advancing identity-based claims justified on the basis
of individual rights
 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

• claims-making and mobilization

• facilitate the expansion of rights

• spaces of citizenship and claims-making

Post national rights are results of struggles, negotiations and

arbitrations by actors at local, national and transnational levels
and are contingent upon issues of distribution and equity

• they are subject to retraction and negation

 Coda: Delimiting the Contours of
Post-national Citizenship

Post-national citizenship as a category and practice draws attention

to the multi-layered and diverse forms that they take and new
arenas in which they are enacted.

Post-national citizenship is an attempt to capture and incorporate

these changes by assigning transnational institutions and
discourses a more predominant analytical role than it is usually
granted in prevailing studies.