Naturalization Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Naturalization is a person’s acquisition of the citizenship of a state whose citizenship he or she did not acquire at birth. Most individuals acquire citizenship automatically at birth through some combination of jus soli (citizenship based on place of birth) and jus sanguinis (citizenship based on parentage), the two elements present to varying degrees in every state’s citizenship laws. By contrast, naturalization happens at some later point in time and involves an administrative decision or procedure.

Conditions for naturalization commonly include a minimum age, demonstrated time of residence, knowledge of the society as demonstrated by a test, language requirements, evidence of good character, and other evidence of integration such as family ties. Such conditions for individual naturalization are often relaxed or waived when state interests are invoked, and most states include provisions for accelerated naturalization in particular circumstances.

States extend or restrict citizenship for many reasons and alter their naturalization requirements accordingly. Most notably, naturalization policies tend to reflect the changing goals of immigration policy. In the United States, for example, naturalization was considerably easier until the 1920s, when both immigration and naturalization were restricted. Making citizenship harder to acquire is one way in which states can attempt to discourage immigration.

Voluntary And Involuntary Naturalization

Many definitions of naturalization describe it solely in terms of the intentional choice of individuals to acquire a new citizenship, but naturalization can be involuntary as well as voluntary and can involve groups as well as individuals. Historically, some states imposed citizenship on noncitizens in order to enforce civic duties, such as military service. Territorial and border changes such as annexation often included large-scale naturalizations of the resident populations, such as the forced naturalization of residents east of the Curzon line, who became Soviet citizens following annexation of their territory by the USSR after World War II (1939–1945). (Many Polish residents instead left or were deported, often resettling in Poland’s “recovered territories,” which had been vacated by departing Germans). Such mass naturalizations usually include provisions for individuals to opt out. State breakdown or mass migrations caused by war provide other triggers for large-scale naturalizations.

The opposite of naturalization is denaturalization, the loss of citizenship resulting from an administrative decision or procedure. An infamous example of denaturalization is the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935, which stripped Jews and others not “of German or kindred blood” of their German citizenship. In response to this and other denaturalizations, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides both that everyone is entitled to a nationality and that no one may be arbitrarily stripped of his or her nationality. This does not prevent denaturalization: The laws of many states continue to provide for denaturalization, such as when a citizen acquires another citizenship through naturalization. Most citizenship laws also allow the voluntary renunciation of one’s citizenship under certain conditions. Other states refuse to recognize naturalization of their citizens in another state.

There remains a gender component to naturalization flowing from the distinctions of citizenship law. Historically, it was commonplace for women (but not men) to automatically lose their citizenship when marrying a noncitizen. In their citizenship laws, many states continue to deny equality between women and men, although this is now uncommon in liberal democracies. Children are likewise a special category, including the question of the age at which a child becomes an adult capable of voluntary naturalization. The citizenship laws of many states provide for automatic naturalization through adoption or the recognition of paternity.

The distinction between supposedly natural citizenship acquisition at birth and non-birth-based naturalization becomes ambiguous as jus sanguinis is extended. For example, many states provide for repatriation or a right of return to coethnics abroad. Israel’s Law of Return, which offers instantaneous naturalized citizenship to any Jew wishing to settle in Israel, was amended in 1970 to extend this right to “the child and the grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew, and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew.” Other states similarly extend preferential access to naturalization on the basis of ethnic grounds (e.g., Italy’s or Spain’s privileging of emigrants and their descendants; Germany’s policies favoring aussiedler, and Greece’s policies favoring ethnic Greeks), linguistic grounds (e.g., Portugal’s facilitating naturalization for people who speak Portuguese), or other grounds.

Cross-National Variation

Explanations for differences in naturalization rates include the costs and benefits of acquiring citizenship, the resources and networks of individuals, the bureaucratic procedures for acquiring citizenship, and the degree of political mobilization to encourage and facilitate naturalization.

The costs of acquiring citizenship often include the obligation to renounce one’s previous citizenship. For example, when Germany eased its citizenship law in 2000 to allow dual citizenship, naturalization rates increased. Benefits of acquiring citizenship include the right to vote and access to more rights than noncitizens have. When the United States in 1996 restricted certain social benefits to citizens (previously, permanent residents also had access to many such benefits), applications for naturalization increased dramatically.

Declining mobilization by political parties and grassroots groups can be linked to falling naturalization levels, but institutional factors, such as differences in state intervention, also play a role. One case study comparing differential naturalization rates among Portuguese immigrants in Canada and the United States found that in Toronto, government bureaucrats and federal policy encouraged citizenship through symbolic support and instrumental aid to ethnic organizations and community leaders, while Boston area grassroots groups were expected to mobilize and aid their constituents without direct state support, resulting in lower naturalization rates.

The introduction of a supranational European Union (EU) citizenship does not constitute naturalization, because EU citizenship is acquired automatically upon acquiring the citizenship of an EU member state and is not a separate legal status. Some have proposed that EU citizenship should be granted based on residence rather than nationality of a member state, but this proposal has not been adopted. Nevertheless, the European Commission has promoted naturalization as a strategy for facilitating integration, arguing that immigrants should be helped to settle successfully into society through the acquisition of rights and citizenship of the member states.

Naturalized citizens generally enjoy the same rights as citizens who acquired citizenship at birth, though naturalized citizens are sometimes subject to denaturalization more easily than native-born citizens. The aim of policies favoring naturalization is generally to avoid the growth of large populations of long-term residents who do not possess citizenship.

Bibliography:

Bloemraad, Irene. “The North American Naturalization Gap: An Institutional Approach to Citizenship Acquisition in the United States and Canada.” International Migration Review 36, no. 1 (2002): 193–228.
Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Maas,Willem. “Migrants, States, and EU Citizenship’s Unfulfilled Promise.” Citizenship Studies 12, no. 6 (December 2008): 583–596.
Safran,William. “Citizenship and Nationality in Democratic Systems: Approaches to Defining and Acquiring Membership in the Political Community.” International Political Science Review 18, no. 3 (1997): 313–335.

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