The study of immigration and citizenship has had several distinct threads that don't necessarily intersect. There are the authors who focus on theories related to citizenship, multiculturalism, and issues of collective rights, such as Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor.Footnote ¹ Then there are the writings by Yasmin Soysal, David Jacobson, and others that focused on postnational citizenship and the expansion of rights for denizens in the 1990s.Footnote ² Coming from a different perspective, Gary Freeman, Mark Miller, James Hollifield, and others were focused on issues surrounding immigration and the labor market, with Hollifield arguing that liberal, rights-based regimes allowed immigrants to enter liberal democracies relatively freely, and once there, to be eligible for rights similar to those of citizens.Footnote ³ Although these authors did not necessarily focus specifically on citizenship, they did raise many related issues that emphasized the political nature of immigration and the difficulties liberal democracies had in denying entry and rights.

What is striking is that you can come to very different conclusions about the importance of citizenship depending on the time period, or if you focus on factors such as political economy, party politics or immigrant integration. In my previous work,Footnote ⁴ I have argued that those who study immigration politics and race politics need to open a dialogue in order to develop research agendas that deal with issues where these politics intersect. Ayelet Shachar's book leads me to want to add that those who study legal theory should also be in dialogue with those who study immigration and citizenship politics in both the American and comparative politics arenas. “Cross-pollination” among these fields could lead to more interesting theoretical discussions, as well as more practical approaches to difficult political issues.

For this symposium, we were asked to assess Shachar's argument and the attention she focuses on the phenomenon of the “birthright lottery.” This provocative book sets out to sell a vision of citizenship that could ultimately lead to a decrease in global inequality. She ends the book with a “plea for creating a basic infrastructure of opportunity for every child everywhere on the face of the earth by overcoming our rigid structures of automatic transfer of citizenship via birthright” (p. 190). Even the idealist in me finds this idea far too utopian to be practical, which Shachar occasionally acknowledges in the text, noting that the implementation of such a change, particularly her idea of a “birthright privilege levy,” would be daunting at best. Inequalities exist within countries as well as between countries. The difference between a citizen on the Upper East Side of New York City and a rural farmer in Mississippi is vast. If we cannot manage these types of inequalities in a federal system that is at least partially designed to redistribute wealth, how could we expect to be able to do this at the global level, where we have not even begun to deal with issues around the global governance of migration?

A focus on birthright citizenship is very important in today's globalized world. In fact, we have seen a renewed focus on the merits of birthright citizenship over the last few years in both the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. However, in order to understand these trends, one must move beyond the legal definition of citizenship, that is, jus soli and jus sanguini, as the main focal point of citizenship policy. As Irene Bloemraad, Anna Korteweg, and Gokce Yurdakul note, “Citizenship is usually defined as a form of membership in a political and geographic community. It can be disaggregated into four dimensions: legal status, rights, political and other forms of participation in society, and a sense of belonging.”Footnote ⁵ Citizenship goes well beyond the simple notion of legal status. In order to understand the political implications of citizenship, it is important to examine it in all its dimensions, which some would argue goes beyond even four dimensions. Early in The Birthright Lottery, Shachar quotes Richard Ford, noting that “only nation-[states] have citizens” (p. 2), but this ignores the fact that citizens make nation-states. These citizens have certain attributes and geographical linkages that they attach to citizenship, leading to varying attitudes around nationalism and the conception of the state. In some countries, the polity can be more open to membership whereas others are more closed, as Rogers Brubaker describes in his seminal work on citizenship in France and Germany.Footnote ⁶

States need citizens in order to have a basis for sovereignty and state power. But just as important, citizenship is political. As Shachar herself notes, “There is, however, nothing apolitical or neutral about these birthright regimes” (p. 10), which is a key point. As a realist, I assume that citizenship is political and designed to ensure that resources are not only kept within a nation-state but also held by those with influence and power. The role of the state and agency must be brought into the picture.

It is actually not true, as Shachar asserts, that the connection between birthright citizenship and political membership has been ignored in academic and public policy circles (p. 11). I have already mentioned the work of Brubaker, but authors like Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith have also grappled with issues around birthright citizenship.Footnote ⁷ As Bloemraad, Korteweg, and Yurdakul note, “Immigration challenges—and in some cases reaffirms—notions of national identity, sovereignty, and state control that have historically been linked to citizenship. These challenges can be studied at two levels of inquiry: one as citizenship within national borders, and the second placing those borders into question.”Footnote ⁸ Citizenship is a critical factor in understanding the politics of immigration, racism, discrimination, and anti-immigrant nationalist movements. Those who study immigration, and in particular immigrant integration, see access to citizenship as an important aspect of understanding the state's role in an immigrant's ability to become a member of a polity.

My own work has focused more recently on issues related to immigration, race, and antidiscrimination policy in the European Union. This research has demonstrated that inequality is linked to a variety of factors beyond place of birth. As Shachar notes, “Formal inclusion, however, has never been enough to guard against the painful experience of exclusion and alienation by members of minority communities who are subtly yet persistently categorized as alien, dangerous, and threatening” (p. 51). But beyond these issues, even in the realm of the marketplace, the European Union is a very good example why Shachar's arguments addressing global inequality are impractical. Inequality is a fundamental part of a market-based political system, whether it is the United States or the EU. The current fiscal crisis has laid bare the stark differences between the German economy and those of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, which have had to implement severe fiscal austerity measures in order to qualify for economic bailouts. Inequalities are persistent because they give power to particular groups or countries, even in so-called communist countries like the former Soviet Union or China. To ignore these political realities is to undermine the argument being made.

If we follow the logic that global inequality can be addressed through a birthright levy, there is the issue of what currently happens with development aid. For most developed countries, development aid is a political tool that is often used to support countries considered strategically important, regardless of whether they are dictatorships or democracies, or how they treat their citizens. There is also the issue of the extraction of rents by corrupt leaders. Even Shachar finds that “we live in a deeply fragmented world, in which too many elected governments in too many countries fail miserably in the provision of security and freedom to their peoples, the protection of civil liberties, or even the most basic subsistence needs (p. 52–53). It's not clear what it is about a birthright levy that would change the political situation. If we were to pursue this type of regime, it would first be necessary to ensure that the benefits would actually get to the people and not simply be used by the rulers.

Another remedy, open immigration, is also an impractical policy, but one should not downplay the role of immigration in shifting wealth at the global level. Shachar mentions the role of remittances, but does not seem to count them in the benefits of immigration to those who do not emigrate: “As a tool of global redistribution, international migration provides extremely generous returns to a limited group of recipients” (p. 84), she writes, not noting that many immigrants take their earnings back to their country of origin, in order to help make it a better place, as well as bringing many of the liberal and democratic values they have learned along the way. It is also interesting to note that both the European Union and the United States are starting to look at remittances as a form of development aid, thus justifying a reduction in state financial transfers.

I do find Shachar's ideas around jus nexi to be very relevant to today's dilemmas around immigration and citizenship, however. Chapter 4, which focuses on “blood and soil,” does an excellent job of outlining the issues around birthright citizenship and the people (often children) who fall through the cracks. There are two important points here; the first is that children who are born right before their parents enter the country are treated very differently than are children born to the same parents after they enter the country. The second point is that someone born in the country does not have “freely willed membership.”Footnote ⁹ Shachar points out that “[t]he absence of an affirmation requirement is all the more glaring when we compare the natural-born citizen with the naturalized immigrant,” who is required to jump through a variety of hoops before being admitted to the polity. Meanwhile, the child of a tourist who is born in the United States has access to all of the rights and benefits of citizenship, even if he or she has not spent any time in the United States since birth.

I completely agree that “a genuine connection principle of membership acquisition, establishing that citizenship must account for more than the mere automatic transmission of entitlement” (p. 164), should be part of our understanding of citizenship. However, this calls for a less radical approach than what Shachar proposes—an approach to citizenship that takes into account the role of consent and the need to apply citizenship to those who have a consensual link to the polity. In his 1998 book, Peter Schuck called for a more consensual approach to citizenship, beginning with “the principle of consensual membership, and therefore [should] refer only to children of those legally admitted to permanent residence in the American community—that is, citizens and legal resident aliens.”Footnote ¹⁰ This same principle can be heard in state legislatures today that are demanding a change to birthright citizenship. However, even this proposal overlooks the fraught politics behind such a change and does not necessarily address the issue of those who are brought to the country by their undocumented migrant parents at an early age.

In the end, Shachar's discussion of a “birthright privilege levy” distracts from what is an important contribution to the discussion around immigration and citizenship. To use her own words, “The vision of universal personhood replacing nationhood may become a reality some day, but that day has clearly not yet arrived” (p. 63). Although I can see the logic behind equating birthright citizenship with inherited property, this part of the book becomes a utopian theoretical exercise in view of the realities of citizenship in today's world. The legalities of this situation are a very small part of the problem—it is politics that drives citizenship policy. As Schuck notes: “Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Cambodia, and all too many other areas of conflict should remind us that the ostensible goals of a post-national citizenship—human rights, cultural autonomy, and full participation in civil society—are tragically elusive, and that its achievements are extremely fragile.”Footnote ¹¹ A better approach would be to focus on aid and democratization, but in the current economic climate (and despite signs of hope in the Middle East), it is more likely that countries will pursue policies that will perpetuate inequality, as seen in declining aid to developing countries.

Despite my pessimism, I find Shachar's work intellectually challenging, and my own work will benefit from reading a perspective that I might not have discovered without having been part of this symposium. I would like to see a greater engagement of Americanists, comparativists, and theorists around these issues. I have enjoyed engaging the work of authors such as Schuck, Smith, Kymlicka, Jacobson, and others who have helped to inform my own ideas around issues of immigration and citizenship. I hope that this symposium is just a beginning in a broader engagement.