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Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe

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TLDR
Soysal et al. as mentioned in this paper compare the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse, and suggest a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging.
Abstract
In many Western countries, rights that once belonged solely to citizens are being extended to immigrants, a trend that challenges the nature and basis of citizenship at a time when nation-states are fortifying their boundaries through restirictive border controls and expressions of nationalist ideologies. In this book, Yasemin Soysal compares the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse. Soysal focuses on postwar international migration, paying particular attention to "guestworkers." Taking an in-depth look at France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, she identifies three major patterns that reflect the varying emphasis particular states place on individual versus corporate groups as the basis for incorporation. She finds that the global expansion and intensification of human rights discourse puts nation-states under increasing outside pressure to extend membership rights to aliens, resulting in an increasingly blurred line between citizen and noncitizen. Finally, she suggests a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging. This fresh approach to the study of citizenship, rights, and immigration will be invaluable to anyone involved in issues of human rights, international migration, and transnational cultural interactions, as well as to those who study the contemporary transformation of the nation-state, nationalism, and globalization.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Neither Citizen nor Stranger: Why States Enfranchise Resident Aliens

David C. Earnest
- 21 Sep 2006 - 
TL;DR: The authors investigates whether democratic states enfranchise their aliens in response to international, transnational, or domestic factors, finding that political parties and judiciaries affect opportunities for aliens in ways the existing scholarship fails to explain.
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Breaking Down Anonymity: Digital Surveillance of Irregular Migrants in Germany and the Netherlands

TL;DR: In recent years, irregular migrants have almost become a public enemy in many countries of the EU as discussed by the authors, and the presence of irregular migrants has become a "public enemy" for policy makers.
Journal ArticleDOI

Citizenship Beyond the State: Thinking with Early Modern Citizenship in the Contemporary World

TL;DR: The authors argue that elements of the early-modern tradition of urban citizenship have indeed survived alongside national citizenship, at least in certain contexts, and argue that early modern citizenship also helps to set in relief the scalar, emancipatory vision of nineteenth-and twentieth-century national-territorial projects.
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Imagined Societies: A Critique of Immigrant Integration in Western Europe

TL;DR: Schinkel argues that the term "multiculturalism" is not used primarily to describe a type of policy or political philosophy in countries such as the Netherlands, France, Germany or Belgium, but rather as a rhetorical device that promotes demands for "integration" as discussed by the authors.