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Unchecked Migration and Democratic Citizenship

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Migration und Minderheiten in der Demokratie

Abstract

In a very influential paper of 1990, William Rogers Brubaker laid out the characteristics of the ideal typical model of nation-state membership: “egalitarian, sacred, national, democratic, unique, and socially consequential”. Egalitarian because there should be no gradations of membership among citizens and the relation to the state granting membership should be unmediated. Sacred because citizens should consider the nation-state to which they belong as an entity regarding which calculations of advantage are inappropriate. National because membership should refer to a community distinctly differentiated from others in cultural, linguistic, traditional terms. Unique in the sense it must be exhaustive and mutually exclusive, and socially consequential, meaning it must entail that certain privileges are reserved for the well-being of the members. Finally, Brubaker explained what the “democratic” adjective—the one that holds most ancestry and authority among all others—meant in terms of a concrete imperative: full membership should carry the duties and rights of participation in the polity and in the long run residence and citizenship must coincide.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In various works, Dahl formulated a strong criterion of democratic inclusiveness that demanded the full inclusion of those competent adults, except for transients, on the base of equal consideration of their interests (see 1979, p. 109; 1990, p. 60).

  2. 2.

    Jean Leca, for example, asserts that market individualism, free from any social commitment and links to the community improves the efficiency of many spheres of modern democracies, but certainly does not give content to citizenship (1994, p. 176).

  3. 3.

    At the same time, some legal experts have noted that national courts are being pressed to extend the rights of asylum seekers through interpretations of wider principles that have been quoted in European courts (see Crosby 2014).

  4. 4.

    Besides, only a few migrants are able to acquire permanent residency (known as the F5 visa), since the limit of a legal stay is a maximum of 4 years and 10 months, two months short of the residency requirement. According to Lim (2012, p. 525), there is little doubt that with this limit the government was responding to demands of Korean business leaders to be able to hire foreign workers for longer and also to prevent the acquisition of permanent residency status. The F5 visa required the fulfilment of at least one kind of investment (economic, cultural, academic, professional, familial, etc.), which was defined in rather demanding terms in combination with years of legal residency in the country, in such a way that the lower value placed on their upfront investment in Korea, the tougher the residency requirement.

  5. 5.

    In 2010 Korea opened a path to citizenship for professional migrant workers and foreign investors which presents a departure from the strict adherence to jus sanguinis as a principle governing the acquisition of nationality: the Nationality Act of May 4 made those “who have exceptional talents in the field of science, economy, culture and sports and are likely to contribute to Korea’s national interest” eligible for special naturalization. Yet, it remains strongly tilted against letting less-skilled workers access nationality (Seol 2012, p. 119).

  6. 6.

    See the discussion between experts in comparative citizenship and experts on Hungarian nationality laws in Bauböck 2010.

  7. 7.

    Marshall’s story of the succession of rights originally applied to England and, at most, parts of Europe, but it has been supplemented with other stories of successions of citizenship rights that incorporate cultural and economic rights and has been rightly criticized, for disregarding gender, ethnic and imperial divides (see Turner 1990).

  8. 8.

    This is so even if, in accordance with Soysal’s perspectives on post-nationalism, there are international law scholars who argue that international treaty law and the practice of states and intergovernmental organizations allow argument in favour of a democratic entitlement as a fundamental human right (see Grace 2003, pp. 10–16).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Berlin, Deutschland

    Luicy Pedroza

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  1. Luicy Pedroza
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  1. Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Philipp Eigenmann

  2. Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit der Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Olten, Switzerland

    Thomas Geisen

  3. Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit der Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Olten, Switzerland

    Tobias Studer

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Pedroza, L. (2016). Unchecked Migration and Democratic Citizenship. In: Eigenmann, P., Geisen, T., Studer, T. (eds) Migration und Minderheiten in der Demokratie. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-04031-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-04031-4_7

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