Four reasons might be anticipated. First, there is some historical continuity since naturalisation has always been a path followed by very few in the region (Acosta 2018). Second, the need to renounce the previous nationality, at least on paper, in countries like Mexico, could act as a deterrent. Third, immigration rates have been quite low in Latin America since the large immigrations of the early 20th Century. Fourth, most current immigration is of regional origin and regional integration processes such as MERCOSUR, the Andean Community but also the Central American System of Integration (SICA in its Spanish acronym), have facilitated mobility, residence and access to rights for regional migrants thus possibly limiting incentives to naturalise.

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Border dwellers in the US and Mexico are subject to two authorities. It’s only fair to give them the cross-border rights and permissions to match.

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Over 15 million citizens of the European Union (EU) are currently living in a Member State other than that of their nationality. While in theory they should be accorded the same electoral rights as nationals of the Member State where they reside, the reality is far more complicated. Member States have wide discretion in regulating voting and candidacy rights of mobile EU citizens. Read More …

The electoral franchise has become more universal as restrictions based on criteria such as sex or property have been lifted throughout the process of democratisation. Yet, a broad range of exclusions has persisted to this date, making the suffrage non-universal, even in established democracies. In this article, we present ELECLAW, a new set of indicators that captures the subtle and variegated legal landscape of persisting electoral rights restrictions. Read More …

Throughout 2018, citizenship has been one of the most ubiquitous topics of political debate in a number of countries. In January the Austrian and the Italian governments entered into a spat over the possibility to offer Austrian citizenship to German and Ladin speaking people living in the region of South Tyrol. In May the United Kingdom government was embroiled in a scandal over the rights of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK in the period after the Second World War. And in October, the US President Donald Trump said he will try to end the right to U.S. citizenship for babies born in the United States to non-citizens. While being a burning topic in the political discourse, the way countries regulate their membership has remained largely intact. In fact, there have been only a few changes to citizenship legislation between January 2018 and January 2019. We have mapped these reforms. Read More …

In the context of citizenship, ‘refusal’ can have both a state dimension and an individual one. It creates populations whose rights are limited domestically or internationally, either through their own volition or by deliberate state action. While in these cases investor citizenship can indeed serve the instrumental purpose of attributing a status it remains a highly problematic practice. Read More …