Arguments for Naturalisation
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00768.x |
| Author | Jonathan Seglow |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Arguments for Naturalisationpost_768788..804
Jonathan Seglow
Royal Holloway, University of London
This article investigates what moral principles should inform states’ decisions to grant resident migrants
the rights of full citizenship. Some work on this question has focused on the beliefs and attitudes it is
thought desirable for migrants to have. This article takes a different approach. Beginning from the
assumption that a high rate of naturalisation is desirable, the article investigates four arguments in its
favour. The contribution argument says that residents merit citizenship by virtue of their productive
contribution to their new society. The coercionargument says it is wrong to impose on resident migrants
laws they had no say in making. The membership argument says that migrants merit citizenship because
they are already members of society. The respect argument says that long-term alienage is a failure of
respect. I argue that the respect account escapes the difficulties of the other arguments,and best matches
our intuitions about naturalisation. Further,the respect which states and citizens owe migrants,if manifest
in the right political climate, is likely to lead to migrants respecting their new society too, and hence
having the right kinds of attitude towards it.
Migrants, having made the often difficult journey to a new society, encounter a
new set of problems. They must find work, a home and schools for their children,
acculturate themselves into a new society, and all this,very often, in an unfamiliar
language which they must also learn. The acquisition of citizenship is yet one
more obstacle a migrant faces. It is never guaranteed, and many states put severe
hurdles in its way. Once a citizen, however, and a migrant is a member in full
standing of a political community which has legally accepted him or her. To be
sure,citizenship does not imply social acceptance. But a citizen nonetheless enjoys
a security which residents lack. He or she has the full set of rights including,
through the vote,the r ight to determine his or her new society’s future,and also
immunity from deportation.
The process of naturalisation is therefore of some importance, not just for
migrants but for established citizens too who naturally have an interest in who
will join them. State authorities too have an interest in it. They may insist on years
of residence, language proficiency, sufficient income, a clean criminal record and
a good character. They may further impose on resident migrants civic or cultural
tests, and they may prohibit dual nationality ( Weil, 2001). Are these requirements
fair? What general principles should govern migrants’ admission to citizenship?
That is what I want to explore in this essay. Some work on this question has
considered what sort of commitment to their new society should be expected of
migrants who wish to naturalise. Thus Noah Pickus maintains that migrants
should identify themselves with ‘the people’, and have an emotional attachment
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00768.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009 VOL 57, 788–804
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
to their shared identity (Pickus, 1998; compare Sahlins, 1996). Shelley Wilcox, by
contrast, advocates a ‘polity model’of naturalisation which requires that migrants
value the major institutions and practices of the polity and feel at home in them
( Wilcox, 2004, pp. 575–82; compare Mason, 1999, pp. 217–2).
The strategy adopted by Pickus and Wilcox assumes without question that
migrants have to adopt certain attitudes before they can become citizens. They
imply that it would be acceptable to deny citizenship to long-term migrants who
do not have the requisite feelings of attachment or identification or who do not
feel at home in their new society. Wilcox criticises Pickus for setting the entry
conditions too high, but like him she thinks it fair to insist that migrants value
certain things without asking the same question of native citizens.It might indeed
be desirable for migrants to value their new society’s institutions and feel at home
there, but whether those should be stipulations is a further question. For Joseph
Carens, that migrants are integrated into their new society is simply an aspiration
– and surely one that native-born children should also share (Carens, 2005a,
p. 39).
While it is certainly desirable for migrants to support their new society’s major
institutions and feel at home there, my own view is that this is not the best
place to start in exploring the ethics of naturalisation. Beliefs and attitudes, as
opposed to behaviour, cannot be controlled by legal stipulation and govern-
ment declaration; they can be fostered in the right political climate, but that
seems unlikely to involve governments insisting that migrants have them (espe-
cially on pain of a refusal to grant citizenship). My aim in this article, therefore,
is to pursue a different approach to the question of naturalisation from Pickus
and Wilcox, one that takes a more elliptical view of migrants’ attitudes. Rather
than asking what migrants ought to do or believe in order to become citizens,
I want to ask why it would be wrong to deny them the opportunity to
naturalise in the first place. This question seems to me a more fundamental one
than the question of what conditions states should set.1The answer to it will
inform our thinking on what concrete conditions states should impose and
what political climate governments should seek to foster. I will compare four
answers to this question, each of them appealing to a different moral intuition
as to the wrongness of permanent alienage. The contribution argument says
that residents merit citizenship by virtue of their productive contribution to
their new society. The coercion argument says it is wrong to impose on
migrants laws they had no say in making. The social membership argument
says that residents are entitled to citizenship because they are already to all
intents and purposes members of society. The respect argument says that it is
a failure of respect not to grant citizenship to those entitled to participate in
civic institutions. I maintain that the former two arguments have severe weak-
nesses. The membership argument is more promising but is hostage to the
contingencies of migrants’ actual membership. The respect argument reformu-
lates membership in ideal terms to escape these difficulties.
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