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What does it mean to be a citizen? In the past the answer seemed simple: Citizenship is a legal status that links individuals to nation states. But in today’s world of global mobility, multilevel governance, and transnational lives, the story is not so straightforward.

An Italian student can move to Utrecht and participate in EU elections in the Netherlands. Local communities, like the city of New York, issue City IDs to provide certain services and rights to residents without government-issued identification documents. 

These new dimensions of citizenship are the focus of a recent special issue that came out in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies for which we have been the guest editors. In this blog, we want to share why we felt it was necessary to rethink citizenship, what we learned from the contributions to the special issue, and why these debates are important. 

Dimensions of citizenship in a globalized world

Traditionally, citizenship has been understood as a tie between individuals and states. You are a citizen of  the Netherlands, Japan or Brazil – and that status comes with a package of rights and responsibilities. Transnational migration, the expansion of supranational political institutions, and the growing role of local governments in defining rights and membership challenge this traditional understanding, transferring some rights and responsibilities to non-citizens. Together, these shifts make citizenship more complex and layered. In our special issue, we propose a framework that helps to map these changes. In this framework, citizenship can be understood along two dimensions: multilevel and transnational.

Citizenship can serve as a mechanism that does not only link individuals to a state but to multiple nested polities at the same time, a phenomenon known as multilevel citizenship. A famous example combining national and supranational levels is EU citizenship, but there are other variants such as MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market) or ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) that grant rights beyond the nation-state. At the same time, citizenship also operates at a subnational level, for instance when local governments facilitate or restrict the process of citizenship acquisition, or provide rights to undocumented migrants via city IDs. In other words, supranational citizenship makes rights and responsibilities homogenous across states, and subnational citizenship makes them heterogeneous within states.

Transnational citizenship views citizenship across borders, rather than up and down levels of government. Here, we differentiate between two types. On the one hand, external citizenship means that states extend rights to their citizens living abroad, such as external voting or acceptance of dual citizenship. Internal citizenship on the other hand, where resident non-citizens are granted rights based on residence rather than nationality, includes for example the ability of immigrants to vote in local Dutch elections. 

Multilevel and transnational citizenship constellations in practice

Why should we care about these developments regarding citizenship? Because these rules define who belongs and who doesn’t, who can participate in democracy and who is excluded, and how rights are distributed in diverse societies. In our special issue we bring together new research that addresses these questions with fresh empirical evidence. 

Citizenship as mobility, not just settlement. Peters, Falcke, and van der Linden show that naturalization is not always a signal of settlement. For some migrants, gaining citizenship enables onward mobility to other countries, allowing migrants to go where they want to be. Yet overall, naturalization increases the likelihood of staying. 

Divergent pathways of external citizenship. Umpierrez de Reguero and Vink analyze global trends in dual citizenship and external voting rights. They find that both have increased globally over time but that there are five dominant pathways in extending these rights. They then identify that political regimes are associated with these pathways.

Barriers to emigrant participation. Witte and Deutschmann study German citizens abroad and find that even when rights exist on paper, bureaucratic obstacles, including complex registration deadlines and procedures, limit political participation in practice. 

Variation within the nation state. Schneider and Zuber highlight how, even under the same national laws, local officials can interpret and apply citizenship rules very differently. Their study of Germany in the early 2000s shows that decisions about dual citizenship for Turkish migrants varied widely across federal states – often depending on local politics. 

Citizenship from below. Van Liempt and Hajer examine the introduction of a municipal City ID in Utrecht, illustrating how the concept of subnational citizenship can work in practice. Their study shows that city IDs can be an effective tool for easing the participation of irregular migrant residents, but that such initiatives lack durability if local governments can be overruled by higher level governance.

Taking these perspectives into account, it becomes clear that rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship are no longer one-dimensional or dependent on the borders of the nation-state. Assuming these developments continue, it is very important that its implications are considered and debated: Should citizenship be based primarily on where we are born, or where we live? Should emigrants have the same voice as residents in shaping a country? How much authority should local governments have in deciding who belongs? 

Our special issue does not provide answers to these questions, but offers a framework for thinking about citizenship in a way that reflects the multilevel and transnational realities of people’s lives.

We thank the focus area Migration and Societal Change for their support and are happy that several members of our SIG Citizenship and immigrant integration have contributed to the special issue.