Dual citizenship and sovereignty

Szabolcs Pogonyi*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Multiple and dual citizenship in the past decades have become widely accepted worldwide. Leading scholars in citizenship studies claim that the growing tolerance of dual citizenship signals the weakening of state sovereignty and the emergence of transnational, post-national or cosmopolitan norms. This paper argues that multiple citizenship standards are neither universally accepted, nor normatively compelling. The cases referred to are intended to demonstrate that contrary to the above assessments, dual citizenship is also used by states to increase their sovereignty, for example promoting national interest abroad through expatriates and trans-border minorities. It is also argued that, in addition to the classical territorial sovereignty- and security-related dilemmas, dual-citizenship policies may violate the norms of democratic equality and popular sovereignty. The paper concludes that the inevitably growing toleration of non-monogamous state-citizen relationships should not be interpreted as a normative justification of promiscuous citizenship policies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)685-704
Number of pages20
JournalNationalities Papers
Volume39
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2011

Keywords

  • Diaspora politics
  • Dual citizenship
  • External voting
  • Kin-state politics
  • Multiple citizenship
  • Postnational citizenship
  • Sovereignty
  • Transnational citizenship

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