REVIEW
Does renouncing citizenship express much at all?
Patti Tamara Lenard (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa)
If immigrants have the option to naturalise or to remain unnaturalized, says Lior Erez, then it is “incoherent” that citizens do not have the same option, that is, to renounce citizenship while remaining permanent residents of a territory (Erez 2025, 750). Renouncing is a politically expressive act, which signals an individual’s desire to stand apart from, and reject responsibility for, their state of (ex)citizenship; explains Erez, this form of political disaffiliation should be made possible without forcing the social disaffiliation of those who make this choice. This is a powerful and important argument to examine. It is difficult to consider this argument without simply focusing on the feasibility question, i.e. what such a proposal looks like in practice, and in the conclusion, I will ask some questions about it. First, however, I will question the plausibility of distinguishing between political and social duties, and then I will question the claim that permitting citizens to renounce (and remain present) and permitting immigrants to refuse naturalisation (and remain present) are the same kind of situation, such that equal treatment is merited, as Erez suggests. That is to say, I will deny Erez’s “incoherence” claim and instead argue that the right to renounce and the right to naturalise are not morally equivalent, and therefore that equal treatment of these cases is not required.
The rights, duties and opportunities of political and social membership
Renunciation is “a form of political exit and…a way to express dissent” (750). In renouncing, an ex-citizen “removes themselves from the political community”, but they “remain members of society while still expressing their political alienation” (751). By permitting individuals the right to “renounce without emigration”, explains Erez, a state “makes the right to political exit more effective as an act of expressive legitimacy contestation” (752). Or put slightly differently, if citizens can elect to become non-citizens, and remain on the relevant territory, the state does not require the ex-citizen to bear the costs of social disaffiliation that would seem to follow acts of political disaffiliation, as for example when forced migrants cross borders in search of safety elsewhere. So, while renunciation is a “rejection of a particular government, regime, or policy…it does not necessarily express a rejection of society” (753). Those who opt for renunciation on Erez’s terms give up their political duties, yet they “retain the obligations of social membership…to obey the law, pay taxes” and others; these duties are owed by all “members of society”, and do not “arise from the status of citizen” (753).
The plausibility of distinguishing between social duties, possessed by all residents, and political duties, possessed only by citizens, depends, at the risk of stating the obvious, on their being clearly distinguishable. It is not clear that they are, however, and Erez does not explain how to distinguish them with any precision. In fact, he seems to think that political duties are quite few, and perhaps only limited to jury duty and some unspecified informal duties – though he offers these thoughts tentatively and with not much of a defence. Yet, there are many activities that we engage in that straddle the line between them and can be colourably either. For example, what if I contribute to civil society by joining the Board of a refugee-serving organisation that itself lobbies for changes in policy towards refugees and asylum-seekers? Or, what if I join the staff of a local newspaper and write news articles for them about what is happening in the local community? Or, what if I focus on improving the quality of education in my child’s school, which is good for all students, even if the motivation for my own work is self-interested. In doing these things, am I participating in the social or political life of my society?
The difficulty is demarcating a clear line between social and political membership, which highlights a challenge with Erez’s attempt to restrict political obligations to citizens, namely, at least currently, non-citizens have a wide range of political opportunities. Readers may think I am deliberately misleading by switching to the language of opportunities, which Erez does not himself do; but there is an intimate connection between them, in the sense that it is through the available opportunities that duties can be discharged. So, non-citizens may lobby political actors, in person, by phone calls, through letter-writing campaigns; they can raise money for political candidates and campaign for them; they can participate in protests and rallies in favour of or against political parties or policies. Do these explicitly political activities become off-limits for those who have renounced citizenship?
Erez might respond by attempting to draw a circle around the right to vote, reserving it for citizens, but leaving the other political activities available to them. But, there are many rejections of the claim that voting ought to be reserved for citizens (Beckman 2006; Hayduk 2004; Lenard 2014). So, if the right to vote is to be the distinguishing feature of citizenship for Erez, then that needs a defence in and of itself, and an account of why these other political opportunities should remain available to non-citizens even if voting is not.
Erez might instead respond by arguing that non-citizens must refrain from all or most forms of political activity and do more work to clarify which of these activities are to be banned for them and why. This response, which I do not think Erez will accept, is inconsistent with a common view that opening up these options for political participation operates as a kind of preparation for citizenship more generally – and therefore serves as an integrating mechanism for immigrants who are assumed to be on the route to citizenship. Indeed, many arguments for granting the right to at least local voting to non-citizens is that doing so supports their longer-term integration into the society they are joining. So, banning all political activity for non-citizens might well serve to level the playing field in some way for those who are on their “in” and way “out” of full political integration; but it does so at the cost of denying a central integrating mechanism for the vast majority of non-citizens who desire rather than reject integration.
Equal treatment of dual citizenship
One argument in favour of protecting a right to renounce, for Erez, is an equal treatment argument: “like cases should be treated alike” (Erez 2025, 748). Permanent residents can refuse to naturalise and remain (mere) residents once they have met the requirements to attain citizenship. Likewise, Erez says, non-immigrant citizens should have the right to choose the state of non-citizen residence. Note that Erez does require that this right to renounce citizenship is available only to dual citizens – because he is persuaded that the status of statelessness is harmful enough that, at least without further consideration, it ought not to be one that an individual can choose. This constraint limits the set of people who have access to the right to renounce. Although justified only briefly, this constraint implies that citizenship’s primary importance is in its protective role, rather than in its conferral of the right to vote. This observation and the discussion above, around which political rights travel with citizenship specifically, suggests that Erez’s argument can be rendered more persuasive with an account of citizenship and its importance: whether it lies in its protective capacity or in its conferral of political rights.
Both options suggest ways for Erez to fine-tune his argument.
One view is that citizenship is valuable for the protection it offers to its holders, following Hannah Arendt’s observation that only those with citizenship status can be guaranteed to have an agent responsible for protecting their rights. The specific protection it offers is against forced exile – a person with citizenship cannot be deported elsewhere, whereas a person with permanent residency remains liable to deportation (Lenard 2018). And so, one central reason to argue in favour of easy and wide access to citizenship is to protect non-citizen residents from deportation. This defence of citizenship makes sense given that the rights of citizens and non-citizen residents are nearly identical, as Erez observes.
However, this answer does not seem to be Erez’s, who as I have explained above locates the difference in the space of political rights – which I argued is not much of a difference at all, given the wide range of political rights and opportunities non-citizens already possess. But it has the advantage that it responds in general to what many (and I would hazard to say most) immigrants want when they apply for citizenship – the confirmation that they will not be forced to leave against their will. Erez’s argument is that citizens ought to be able to renounce their citizenship (so long as they possess a second one, which will include nearly all of those who have naturalised into it), and be protected against deportation to their country of citizenship once they have done so. Currently, states do not, in general, protect non-citizens from deportation. The argument that residents ought to possess the right to reside indefinitely and without facing the risk of deportation is one that has to be made rather than assumed (Buckinx and Filindra 2015; Birnie 2020). In other words, we need an answer to the question of why a state should protect non-citizens from being deported, leaving aside the question of how they came to be non-citizen residents. And separately, why should they do that in particular for those who have repudiated it by renouncing citizenship? Why should the state be moved to protect their social affiliations in this situation? That seems like a very big, and in Erez’s argument so far, undefended claim.
Maybe Erez is in fact prepared to argue that any person with permanent residence status ought to be protected from deportation – but if so, not only has he further diminished the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, he has raised another question for his account. If there is so little difference between the status of citizens and residents, such that their rights and opportunities are virtually identical, is the decision to renounce, in fact, as expressive as he claims? In an elaborated view, were Erez to defend the claim that residents cannot be deported and accept my claim that virtually all rights and privileges are identical between citizens and non-citizens (including virtually all political opportunities, including the right to vote), then there are nearly no costs to renouncing citizenship, especially for dual citizens, and the alleged demonstration of political dissent carries little of the expressive content he ascribes to it. If it has so little expressive content, however, it is hardly worth defending as an option to be made available.
Erez observes that one key feature of citizenship status has to do with the way that it is recognised globally. One requires a citizenship status of some kind to access the passport that permits travel across borders, to return to one’s country of citizenship, and to access consular assistance while abroad. So, the requirement that the right to renounce citizenship is limited to those who have another state that can offer them travel privileges further diminishes the cost of renouncing, such that it is negligible. If what I have so far written is plausible, then would-be renouncers – because they must possess a passport elsewhere so that they can access travel, and because the distinction in rights between citizens and residents is minor, even with respect to access to political opportunities – would hardly make a statement by renouncing. And if giving up citizenship while remaining protected from deportation is hardly a statement, then it is not clear that the argument in favour of allowing it is very persuasive at all. Erez’s argument would be more powerful if statelessness were permitted, so that would-be renouncers would in fact have to accept genuine costs in giving up their status, and the expression of political dissent would thereby be significant rather than minor – paradoxically, doing so would protect them from deportation, because stateless people cannot be deported, even as it would reduce their travel opportunities.
I should add that I am personally comfortable with asymmetric arguments. For example, while I believe that citizens should have the unilateral right to renounce citizenship (though I do not believe that they ought thereby to be protected from deportation), I do not believe that the state has a corresponding unilateral right to revoke that citizenship. I can justify this difference by being attentive to the power possessed by the state in relation to an individual and arguing that it is individuals and not the state who are vulnerable to harmful consequences, in the face of a unilateral severing of the relationship. Put slightly differently, the context that citizens face when they consider renouncing is not morally the same as the one faced by residents who choose not to naturalise. These two individuals face distinct circumstances in which, in virtue of their different statuses, they hold different rights, privileges and obligations: in my view, an equal treatment argument does not apply.
Conclusion
In his important and provocative article, Lior Erez argues in favour of the right to renounce citizenship, as a politically expressive act – coupled with the right to remain indefinitely, and (I believe) without threat of deportation. Enabling this right would support the legitimacy of any state that protects it, he says, since then we would know that all citizens consent to its authority; any non-consenting (dual) citizen can renounce citizenship if they are politically alienated and wish to express their dissent on a permanent basis. There are practical questions that arise with such a proposal, like whether someone who has renounced citizenship should be entitled to re-naturalise, and whether the state of residency would be required to re-admit them if they travel and wish to return.
I have raised some questions about whether the right to renounce really is as expressive as Erez says, under the conditions that he must be assuming to be true. And I have encouraged Erez to consider what citizenship status is meant to offer – I have argued, contra what I have understood Erez to be saying, that citizenship status is meant to protect us from forced deportation/exile. Erez, I believe, is connecting citizenship to politics and specifically the right to vote. And yet, I argued, the right to vote is not always restricted to citizens (and I do believe it ought not to be more generally), and moreover, there are myriad political opportunities available to noncitizens, many arguably more important and powerful than voting. For renouncing to be a powerful expressive act, it must also be that the renouncing agent takes on costs in doing so – Erez argues for reducing the costs of renouncing so much that its expressive power is fundamentally minimal.
I would like to thank Margaret Moore for comments on an earlier version of this comment.