Deserving Citizenship


Book Description

In the past decade, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have formalised or introduced language and knowledge of society tests for immigrants applying for citizenship. The aim of this book is to assess the explicit and hidden goals these citizenship tests are meant to achieve, as well as to analyse their intended and unintended effects. The book answers the questions of why the countries under consideration introduced citizenship tests and what effects these tests have produced. The latter question has been answered on the basis of an analysis of relevant statistics and an analysis of interviews with immigrants and stakeholders. Furthermore, the content of the tests presented to (possible) future citizens of Germany, the Netherlands and the UK has been thoroughly analysed.




Deserving and Entitled


Book Description

Public policy in the United States is marked by a contradiction between the American ideal of equality and the reality of an underclass of marginalized and disadvantaged people who are widely viewed as undeserving and incapable. Deserving and Entitled provides a close inspection of many different policy arenas, showing how the use of power and the manipulation of images have made it appear both natural and appropriate that some target populations benefit from policy, while others do not. These social constructions of deservedness and entitlement, unless challenged, become amplified over time and institutionalized into permanent lines of social, economic, and political cleavage. The contributors here express concern that too often public policy sends messages harmful to democracy and contributes significantly to the pattern of uneven political participation in the United States.




Learn about the United States


Book Description

"Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.




Citizenship in a Republic


Book Description

Citizenship in a Republic is the title of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. One notable passage from the speech is referred to as "The Man in the Arena": It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.




I, Citizen


Book Description

This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.




Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life


Book Description

What does citizenship have to do with living a worthy human life? Political scientists and philosophers who study the practice of citizenship, including Rawlsian liberals and Niebuhrian realists, have tended to either relegate this question to the private realm or insist that ethical principles must be silenced or seriously compromised in our deliberations as citizens. This book argues that the insulation of public life from the ethical standpoint puts in jeopardy not only our integrity as persons but also the legitimacy and long-term survival of our political communities. In response to this predicament, David Thunder aims to rehabilitate the ethical standpoint in political philosophy, by defending the legitimacy and importance of giving full play to our deepest ethical commitments in our civic roles and developing a set of guidelines for citizens who wish to enact their civic roles with integrity.




Calling for the Super Citizen


Book Description

This book offers the first empirical and holistic analysis of the design, implementation and effects of the new naturalisation regimes in the United Kingdom and Germany introduced in the 2000s. Based on a multi-sited state ethnography, it uniquely compares the law on the books, the local administration, and the lived experiences of citizenship tests, courses, and ceremonies from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. The book argues that naturalisation procedures in both countries suggest to migrants to constantly optimise themselves in the state’s interests toward the subjectivity of the “Super Citizen” – a political, economic, and cultural asset to the liberal-democratic, capitalist nation-state. The concept of the Super Citizen enables us to highlight and criticise the overburdening expectations toward citizens by application as opposed to citizens by birth. The analysis reveals that the self-presentation of Britain and Germany as liberal and meritocratic polities is in stark contrast to migrants’ lived experiences of the naturalisation process. By shedding light on naturalisation policies’ efficacy, this book is aimed at students and scholars in sociology, politics, law, anthropology, and education, as well as policy-makers in the areas of citizenship and migration.




The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship


Book Description

Contrary to predictions that it would become increasingly redundant in a globalizing world, citizenship is back with a vengeance. The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship brings together leading experts in law, philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, and geography to provide a multidisciplinary, comparative discussion of different dimensions of citizenship: as legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; and as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. The contributors engage with some of the oldest normative and substantive quandaries in the literature, dilemmas that have renewed salience in today's political climate. As well as setting an agenda for future theoretical and empirical explorations, this Handbook explores the state of citizenship today in an accessible and engaging manner that will appeal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Chapters highlight variations in citizenship regimes practiced in different countries, from immigrant states to 'non-western' contexts, from settler societies to newly independent states, attentive to both migrants and those who never cross an international border. Topics include the 'selling' of citizenship, multilevel citizenship, in-between statuses, citizenship laws, post-colonial citizenship, the impact of technological change on citizenship, and other cutting-edge issues. This Handbook is the major reference work for those engaged with citizenship from a legal, political, and cultural perspective. Written by the most knowledgeable senior and emerging scholars in their fields, this comprehensive volume offers state-of-the-art analyses of the main challenges and prospects of citizenship in today's world of increased migration and globalization. Special emphasis is put on the question of whether inclusive and egalitarian citizenship can provide political legitimacy in a turbulent world of exploding social inequality and resurgent populism.




The Human Right to Citizenship


Book Description

The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the right to citizenship in international and regional human rights law. It critically reflects on the limitations of state sovereignty in nationality matters and situates the right to citizenship within the existing human rights framework. It identifies the scope and content of the right to citizenship by looking not only at statelessness, deprivation of citizenship or dual citizenship, but more broadly at acquisition, loss and enjoyment of citizenship in a migration context. Exploring the intersection of international migration, human rights law and belonging, the book provides a timely argument for recognizing a right to the citizenship of a specific state on the basis of one’s effective connections to that state according to the principle of jus nexi.




Us and Them?


Book Description

Us and Them? explores the distinction between migrant and citizen through using the concept of 'the community of value'. The challenges of migration go to the heart of equality, rights, freedom, and membership. These are not only matters for migrants but go to the heart of citizens' politics.