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Who Should be Included? Noncitizens, Conflict and the Constitution of the Citizenry

Author: Matthew J. Gibney
Date: 2008
Size: 15 pages

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Summary

What can the consideration of citizenship issues contribute to debates on political institutions in divided societies? What does it mean to distribute citizenship fairly? This book chapter considers the question of access to citizenship and associated rights for noncitizens. A growing literature has been concerned with the tyranny of ethnic majorities in democratic political systems, but a ‘tyranny of the citizens’ should also be considered. Residents of a society who are stateless or ‘informal members’ should have genuine opportunities to gain citizenship. 

A country’s resident noncitizens may include those who hold nationality nowhere, those who hold citizenship elsewhere, nationals who lack formal full standing in society and those whose nationality and formal legal equality is constrained in practice by informal factors. The most common method by which individuals have become noncitizens has been through crossing borders. Less common are citizenship revocation or withdrawal, or fundamental changes to a citizenship-granting state, such as cessation or division.

Examining the distribution of citizenship in a country is important in understanding its horizontal inequalities. The key benefits of citizenship relate to privileges, voice and security; with citizenship comes control over crucial political, economic and social goods. Lack of citizenship may be experienced as a humiliation, which may fuel violence, particularly if experienced by an ethnic group. Obstacles to citizenship reform, however, include the following:

• The conferring or withholding of citizenship is highly political, closely linked to ethnic group competition, and entrenched interests benefit from the current definition of the demos in each society.
• Many societies are characterised by formally unequal citizenship on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity. Extending citizenship may therefore not lead to equal treatment in such contexts.
• Group membership has been a stronger principle than individual equality in some societies, in many cases reinforced by colonisers seeking to rule through existing structures.

A number of approaches to citizenship reform might be taken, with differing implications for political arrangements. There is a strong and immediate case for respecting the first two of these principles.

• The least inclusive, most fundamental basis for granting citizenship is the lack of alternative political membership principle. This asserts that every person deserves citizenship in some country, and deserves it where they are currently living if they can claim citizenship nowhere else.
• At a higher level of inclusion, the informal membership principle holds that members of a state who are already de facto citizens deserve formal citizenship. Contributions and ties to a society, in addition to extended residence, might be relevant criteria.
• The most radical principle is that of democratic inclusion. On this basis, all those affected by a state’s decisions should have a voice in contributing to them.

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Source: Gibney, M., 2008, 'Who Should be Included? Noncitizens, Conflict and the Constitution of the Citizenry', in Stewart, F., (ed.), Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 25-40.