Final Report Summary - MICITHISEN (Migration and Citizenship in Western Europe: A History)
The proposed research was aimed to provide a historical analysis of the impact of human mobility on the institution of citizenship and the definition of citizenry in a selection of countries that historically played a major role in the founding of the European Union.
Citizenship studies have primarily focussed on more recent times, with a view to assess whether or not European states have undergone a process of liberalization and/or harmonization of their citizenship policies and how these recent development of citizenship affected – or were affected by – the construction of a European identity. Most literature has specifically examined how immigration has changed the nature and condition of citizenship as a mechanism for social and political inclusion/exclusion. Only in the last decade, a shift of attention has occurred to include in the picture diaspora politics, emigration policies and the interactions between homeland countries’ governments and the expatriates.
MiCitHisen promotes a useful cross-fertilization between history and the social sciences by studying comparatively the history of citizenship and nationhood and by addressing the impact of migrations on the policies and politics of citizenship in Western Europe from the 19th century to the 1990s. By adopting a much-needed historical perspective, MiCitHisen brings an original contribution to the studies on citizenship in Europe and a deeper understanding of the political cultures and legal traditions underpinning them. In fact, the project has not only considered to what extent citizenship policies are bound up with historical patterns of nationhood and national legal traditions, but also and mostly how the mutually constitutive relationship between imperialism/colonialism, the consolidation/diffusion of the modern (nation-)state, and human mobility interact more broadly in the definition of citizenship and membership policies.
The research has analyzed in depth the historical cases of five European countries – France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom (some less systematic references, based mostly on secondary sources, were made to other national cases, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) – to assess how States strategically plan and organize the mobility of their populations as a response to the challenges posed by a globalized market, as well as to investigate how these policies have been consciously designed and implemented to consolidate a racialized notion of national identity and an ethnic definition of formal citizenship. The in-depth comparative case studies offer highly comparable historical developments, since they all share long-standing traditions of consolidation of the state and construction of national identities vis-à-vis human mobility, hereby defined as emigration, immigration, colonizing and reverse (i.e. post-colonial) migrations.
MICitHisen is innovative methodologically, empirically and theoretically. It turns to theory to explain historical data and analyses on the relationship between the consolidation of the nation-state and human mobility, in an attempt both to overcome the disciplinary tendency of historians to build narratives of the particular and to avoid any methodological nationalism. At the same time, it offers a major contribution to the development of theories on sovereignty and citizenship, nationalism and imperialism, by challenging them against the litmus tests of history and broad comparison.
Methodologically, the study is grounded in a strong interdisciplinary and comparative approach. The methodology has relied on archival research, multilayered qualitative analysis, with a degree of statistical information and collection of quantitative data from extant database. The chosen methods represent the outcome of a fruitful exchange of ideas between the researcher and the scientist in charge, which led to consider history as a social science specialized in long-term developments. The comparative method has been paramount to bringing historical and social scientific approaches into the same paradigm. The main challenges posed by comparative history are those of time and the skills necessary to command archival sources in different countries and distinct languages. The extremely rich production of national and comparative studies by historians and social scientists on the politics of citizenship, nation-building, construction of national identity in Europe has made comparative analysis possible. Yet the work was not at all restricted just to secondary literature, since the research has been strongly based upon primary sources collected at national archives and government statistics on immigration, emigration, and internal mobility, legal documents and parliamentary proceedings for all of the five in-depth comparative case studies.
MiCitHisen therefore further develops the state of the art in the field of political theory and history, international relations, citizenship and migration studies. The research broadens the historical outlook, the geographical scope, and the theoretical discussion on the governmental technologies of extra-territorial sovereignty employed by the modern nation-state. It appraises the historical legacies and impact in contemporary Europe of national citizenship and membership policies, as it creates so far unpublished quantitative indicators of the number of non-EU citizens who are granted a EU passport as a result of the expansionary/selective citizenship policies. A feature that obviously impacts on the EU’s governance of border, immigrants’ inflows, labor market and Welfare systems.
The work carried out adds not only to the theoretical discussion in academics, but sheds light on intensely political issues that characterize the contemporary debates about the nature of citizenship and governance of population both at the EU and national levels.
Citizenship studies have primarily focussed on more recent times, with a view to assess whether or not European states have undergone a process of liberalization and/or harmonization of their citizenship policies and how these recent development of citizenship affected – or were affected by – the construction of a European identity. Most literature has specifically examined how immigration has changed the nature and condition of citizenship as a mechanism for social and political inclusion/exclusion. Only in the last decade, a shift of attention has occurred to include in the picture diaspora politics, emigration policies and the interactions between homeland countries’ governments and the expatriates.
MiCitHisen promotes a useful cross-fertilization between history and the social sciences by studying comparatively the history of citizenship and nationhood and by addressing the impact of migrations on the policies and politics of citizenship in Western Europe from the 19th century to the 1990s. By adopting a much-needed historical perspective, MiCitHisen brings an original contribution to the studies on citizenship in Europe and a deeper understanding of the political cultures and legal traditions underpinning them. In fact, the project has not only considered to what extent citizenship policies are bound up with historical patterns of nationhood and national legal traditions, but also and mostly how the mutually constitutive relationship between imperialism/colonialism, the consolidation/diffusion of the modern (nation-)state, and human mobility interact more broadly in the definition of citizenship and membership policies.
The research has analyzed in depth the historical cases of five European countries – France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom (some less systematic references, based mostly on secondary sources, were made to other national cases, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) – to assess how States strategically plan and organize the mobility of their populations as a response to the challenges posed by a globalized market, as well as to investigate how these policies have been consciously designed and implemented to consolidate a racialized notion of national identity and an ethnic definition of formal citizenship. The in-depth comparative case studies offer highly comparable historical developments, since they all share long-standing traditions of consolidation of the state and construction of national identities vis-à-vis human mobility, hereby defined as emigration, immigration, colonizing and reverse (i.e. post-colonial) migrations.
MICitHisen is innovative methodologically, empirically and theoretically. It turns to theory to explain historical data and analyses on the relationship between the consolidation of the nation-state and human mobility, in an attempt both to overcome the disciplinary tendency of historians to build narratives of the particular and to avoid any methodological nationalism. At the same time, it offers a major contribution to the development of theories on sovereignty and citizenship, nationalism and imperialism, by challenging them against the litmus tests of history and broad comparison.
Methodologically, the study is grounded in a strong interdisciplinary and comparative approach. The methodology has relied on archival research, multilayered qualitative analysis, with a degree of statistical information and collection of quantitative data from extant database. The chosen methods represent the outcome of a fruitful exchange of ideas between the researcher and the scientist in charge, which led to consider history as a social science specialized in long-term developments. The comparative method has been paramount to bringing historical and social scientific approaches into the same paradigm. The main challenges posed by comparative history are those of time and the skills necessary to command archival sources in different countries and distinct languages. The extremely rich production of national and comparative studies by historians and social scientists on the politics of citizenship, nation-building, construction of national identity in Europe has made comparative analysis possible. Yet the work was not at all restricted just to secondary literature, since the research has been strongly based upon primary sources collected at national archives and government statistics on immigration, emigration, and internal mobility, legal documents and parliamentary proceedings for all of the five in-depth comparative case studies.
MiCitHisen therefore further develops the state of the art in the field of political theory and history, international relations, citizenship and migration studies. The research broadens the historical outlook, the geographical scope, and the theoretical discussion on the governmental technologies of extra-territorial sovereignty employed by the modern nation-state. It appraises the historical legacies and impact in contemporary Europe of national citizenship and membership policies, as it creates so far unpublished quantitative indicators of the number of non-EU citizens who are granted a EU passport as a result of the expansionary/selective citizenship policies. A feature that obviously impacts on the EU’s governance of border, immigrants’ inflows, labor market and Welfare systems.
The work carried out adds not only to the theoretical discussion in academics, but sheds light on intensely political issues that characterize the contemporary debates about the nature of citizenship and governance of population both at the EU and national levels.