Citizenship as reparations : should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership?

Citizenship as reparations : should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership?

dc.contributor.editor	OWEN, David
dc.contributor.editor	BAUBÖCK, Rainer
dc.date.accessioned	2025-09-12T14:28:33Z
dc.date.available	2025-09-12T14:28:33Z
dc.date.issued	2025
dc.description.abstract	A growing number of states have adopted “reparative citizenship” laws. This forum discusses the normative justification and problematic implications of such policies. In their initial essay, David Owen and Rainer Bauböck describe the phenomenon as the offer of citizenship status acquired by declaration or entitlement for persons who live permanently outside the state’s territory and are the descendants of persons who have lost their citizenship or similar membership status and could not pass it on to a next generation under conditions for which the current state bears responsibility and for which it accepts remedial duties. These include state perpetrated mass killings, persecutions or expulsions, a loss of parts of the state’s territory through secession, partition or annexation by another state, and discriminatory past citizenship laws that deprived certain groups of their citizenship status who would be entitled to this status under current legislation. A fourth context is that of reparations for colonialism and slavery where, however, it is generally not the perpetrator states that have offered citizenship as a compensation. 19 authors offer responses and further reflections on reparative citizenship, with some of them widening the scope of the phenomenon to include e.g. voluntary noncitizenship as a reparation for indigenous peoples (Kane and Lenard), and reparative citizenship for stateless people in situ (Sperfeld). Many authors are sceptical that citizenship reparations are normatively required (Erez) and regard such policies as exemplifying a broader trend towards devaluing citizenship (Spiro), or see them as driven by state efforts of nation-building and nationbranding (Aragoneses, Pogonyi) and selective immigration policies (Schweitzer and Magazzini). For Jelena Dzankic, they are not only selective, but also transactional and dangerous. Several contributions draw general lessons from discussing specific cases, such as Britain’s postimperial citizenship and immigration policies (Jacob-Owens), New Zealand citizenship for Samoans (Aithal, Cook, Lloydd and Sardelic), Namibian citizenship for Herero and Nama displaced by the genocide committed by German colonizers (Manby) and citizenship reparations for past gender discrimination in ius sanguinis transmissions (Mantha-Hollands, Blanchard). Bauböck and Owen conclude the debate with a rejoinder in which they defend the view that realist analyses of state motives do not preclude that under certain conditions reparative citizenship policies might still be defensible or even required.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.issn	1028-3625
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/93664
dc.language.iso	en
dc.orcid.putcode	1814/80997:191741594
dc.publisher	European University Institute
dc.relation.ispartofseries	EUI
dc.relation.ispartofseries	RSC
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Working Paper
dc.relation.ispartofseries	2025/55
dc.relation.ispartofseries	[GLOBALCIT]
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject	Citizenship
dc.subject	Reparations
dc.subject	Restoration
dc.subject	Ius sanguinis
dc.subject	Colonialism
dc.title	Citizenship as reparations : should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership?
dc.type	Working Paper
dspace.entity.type	Publication
person.identifier.orcid	0000-0003-2336-7414
person.identifier.other	31459
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relation.isEditorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	817b581a-8979-45b1-bab1-b592fd634729