Citizenship and State Transition. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Memories of the Past and Visions of the Future: Remembering the Soviet Era and its End in Ukraine
Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, eds., "Twenty Years After Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration" (Oxford University Press), pp. 146-167., 2014
While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region. The book is built on three premises. The first is that political actors always strive to come to terms with the history of their communities in order to generate a sense of order in their personal and collective lives. Second, new leaders sometimes find it advantageous to mete out justice on the politicians of abolished regimes, and whether and how they do so depends heavily on their interpretation and assessment of the collective past. Finally, remembering the past, particularly collectively, is always a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration needs to be studied as an integral part of the establishment of new collective identities and new principles of political legitimacy. Each chapter takes a detailed look at the commemorative ceremony of a different country of the former Soviet Bloc. Collectively the book looks at patterns of extrication from state socialism, patterns of ethnic and class conflict, the strategies of communist successor parties, and the cultural traditions of a given country that influence the way official collective memory is constructed. Twenty Years After Communism develops a new analytical and explanatory framework that helps readers to understand the utility of historical memory as an important and understudied part of democratization.
Ethnic and nationalist movements display a wide variety of demands, activities and goals but they all involve the state. States and governments are pressed to develop policies that stretch from cultural recognition and territorial autonomy to special rights and public goods provision for the relevant community. Mobilization centered on identity politics is often peaceful but there are also instances where the politicization of grievances may lead to violence such as riots, terrorism or civil wars. This chapter explains the repertoire of actions available to ethno-nationalist movements and concentrates on the importance of structural conditions in making salient ethnic and national cleavages. The focus is on movements operating in democratic settings and the impact of macro-social changes on indigenous movements in Latin America.
Statelessness, 'In-Between' Statuses, and Precarious Citizenship
Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, 2017
This chapter explains why a growing number of people across the globe experience precarious citizenship--they cannot gain access to secure and permanent legal statuses for protracted periods. Ambiguous and temporary legal statuses are spreading because they represent a strategic government response to avoid resolving dilemmas about citizenship (especially questions about the incorporation of minorities, refugees, or labor migrants) by postponing those decisions, perhaps indefinitely. Moreover, the very processes of boundary-enforcement (biometric IDs and deportations) have pulled more people into the documentary power of the state without providing them a secure place within it. Four categories are discussed: 1) individuals who cannot obtain national identity documents and become stateless; 2) individuals who may have identity documents but lack residency authorization and become ‘illegal’; and a spectrum of groups with temporary statuses that are neither stateless nor fully unauthorized, including (3) temporary humanitarian protection or (4) temporary labor statuses.
The Politics of Citizenship Policy in Post-Soviet Russia.
Post-Soviet Affairs, v. 28, no. 1, 2012
Russian citizenship policy has evolved in puzzling ways from the 1990s, when all former Soviet citizens were entitled to simplified access to Russian citizenship, to the 2002 citizenship law, which put an abrupt end to this policy, giving few but those born on the territory of Russia the right to citizenship. Since 2002, the right to Russian citizenship has been extended to some additional categories of former Soviet citizens, but without a return to the expansive policy of the 1990s. Drawing on legal and governmental sources and the scholarly literature, this article looks at elite debates over citizenship rules to analyze Russian citizenship politics and policies, focusing on citizenship rules affecting former Soviet citizens. These are examined to uncover the causes of legislative zigzags and ascertain the applicability of existing citizenship theories to Russian realities.
The Politics of Citizenship Policy in New States
The politics of national identity influences citizenship rules in new states, but not in the way that existing theories would predict. Existing theories attribute ethnic or civic citizenship laws to dominant ethnic or civic national identity conceptions, but in many new states there is no dominant national identity conception. In the post-Soviet region all civic citizenship laws emerge without the civic national identity conception. The case of Ukraine shows how civic citizenship law may be an unintended side effect of contested identity politics. The post-Soviet experience suggests that the politics of citizenship policy in new and older states is different: national identity is a major source of citizenship policies in new states, but its impact may be different from what existing theories posit.
PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 587, 2019
The post-World War II era, and especially the post-Cold War era, has seen the global spread of dual citizenship. Situating post-Soviet states in this global pattern reveals some similarities and important differences in the rationale behind allowing or forbidding dual citizenship. Three distinct trends in the politics of dual citizenship in the post-communist region are evident. First, to a greater extent than in Western states, concerns for safeguarding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and associated fears of possibly subversive actions by other states, particularly neighboring states, by means of dual citizenship and dual citizens are a key factor behind opposition to dual citizenship. Second, the extension of dual citizenship to co-ethnics is not a uniform reality. Instead, the right of ethnic diasporas to dual citizenship has been a highly contested issue, and fears of diaspora influences on domestic affairs have often stood in the way. Finally, the ruling elites’ drive for power maximization can also makes dual citizenship rules a tool for punishing and weakening political opposition.
Language Movement and Pragmatic Change in a Conflict Area (in Albaugh & De Luna, OUP 2018)
Nassenstein, Nico. 2018. Language movement and pragmatic change in a conflict area: The border triangle of Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo. In Albaugh, Ericka A. & Kathryn M. De Luna (eds.), Tracing Language Movement in Africa. Oxford: OUP. Uploaded PDF: Uncorrected draft paper. Please find the final version on https://global.oup.com/academic/product/tracing-language-movement-in-africa-9780190657543?cc=de&lang=en&