The rights and duties of external citizenship

Abstract

What are the rights and obligations of citizens who live outside their country? Political theory has so far focused on immigrants' access to citizenship in countries of settlement and has had little to say about their relations to their countries of origin. External citizenship is, however, of growing importance for large numbers of migrants as well as for sending states, many of which have dramatically changed their attitudes towards expatriates. I have proposed a stakeholder criterion for determining who should have claims to external citizenship status and rights. In this article I summarize how this argument applies to the acquisition and loss of citizenship outside a state's territory, to the right to return, to an external franchise, and to citizenship duties of military service, paying taxes and compulsory voting