The Shifting Parameters of Nationality
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which in turn is meant to enhance their integration.133 When considering state practice, in several countries developments can be identified to extend voting rights
to migrants, but there are still considerable variations, both in terms of the level
at which elections are opened to foreigners (local, regional and national),134 and in
terms of the extent of the residence requirements.135
4.2.3 Nationality and the Right to Enter and Stay: The Right to Have Rights
Notwithstanding the developments of the human rights paradigm and the related
growing detachment of rights and nationality,136 there are still rights that only persons with the nationality of a state fully enjoy, more particularly rights to enter and
stay in a state, and voting rights. What is particularly striking is that these rights can
be argued to constitute core rights for actual, effective membership in a political
community.
First of all, rights to entry and stay (reside) are the essential precondition to
become a member of the polity, understood as a political community with territorial bounds. Indeed, one needs a place where one can makes one’s home,137 participate politically, and exercise one’s civil, political and social rights.138 In this respect
Hannah Arend’s famous qualification of nationality as the right to have rights can
be understood: nationality as the precondition for the effective enjoyment of fundamental rights.139 As long-term resident foreign nationals obtain stronger rights of
residence, including enhanced protection from deportation, as well as related socioeconomic rights (access to employment and family reunification), the term ‘denizen’
was coined to reflect a status which entitled persons to many but not all rights of full
citizens.140
Secondly, also (national) voting rights are often highlighted as being of crucial
importance because they provide opportunities for co-determining governance.141
Bellamy highlights in this respect that political participation rights are the rights
133
Groenendijk (2008), p. 5. See also Lenard (2015), pp. 122–123 who argues that collective participation in the electoral system and the shared institutions builds social cohesion. Cf. Rostek and Davies
(2006), p. 5.
134
See the discussion of the quantitative analysis in Earnest (2015), pp. 4, 7.
135
Groenendijk (2008), p. 4. See Earnest (2015), pp. 5–6 who distinguishes 5 categories.
136
Kesby (2012), p. 94.
137
Inter alia, De Groot (2015), pp. 29–30.
138
Kesby (2012), p. 52.
139
Oman (2010), p. 281. See also Shachar (2014), pp. 114–115 who highlights that our rights remain
fragile when we are not member of a political community. See also Somers (2008) who highlights the
primary right of recognition, inclusion and membership in both political and civil society (social and
political recognition), preceding the second bundle of rights consisting of civil, political, social, cultural
etc. rights, pp. 6 and 25.
140
Turner (2016), p. 679.
141
Kesby (2012) p. 58; De Groot (2015), pp. 29–30. Smith (2002) acknowledges that with the different
spatialities of citizenship over time—this idea of political co-determination was not always strongly present, referring to the feudal times where it was restricted to some cities (p. 106), stronger again after the
revolutions in the 18th century, whereas today there would be less focus on political activism and rather
on involvement in social, economic and cultural organizations (p. 112).
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