110 L. Harder Bauböck’s description of birthright citizenship evades the fact that establishing citizenship through birth, as with any other basis for membership, is an inherently political decision. One of the central appeals of birthright is that it involves innocent, vulnerable babies, infants who are not (yet) marked by misdeeds, criminality, inadequate knowledge or commitment, or the wrong ideological proclivities. It is this innocence that helps to obscure the profoundly political basis of birthright; that makes it possible to describe birthright citizenship as avoiding political division and establishing a quasi-­natural equality. However, the use of criteria of birth to determine political membership – whether it is birth to a citizen parent (variously defined) or birth in the territory (variously defined) – is not innocent. Prevailing views about • wedlock and patriarchal forms of social organisation (e.g. unwed mothers having responsibility for their children and conferring citizenship, but unwed fathers having no such responsibility or capacity); • the relative significance of biological and social parenting as well as gender and sexuality (can a lesbian co-mother confer citizenship on her genetic progeny to whom she did not give birth – just as fathers do?); • national attachment (is this child born abroad as second or subsequent generation?); and • how generous territorial definitions should be (is a child born to a Ugandan mother on an American airline flying in Canadian airspace from Amsterdam to Boston a Canadian? Answer = yes) 3 all play out in the rules that determine birthright entitlement. The magical power of birthright citizenship is that it makes it possible for us to know and rehearse these rules while simultaneously making birthright seem straightforward, static and apolitical. In contrast to citizenship debates that engage migration, legal and illegal status and naturalisation, birthright citizenship makes these political choices disappear with a wave of a wand. I am currently researching a book on the lost Canadians. These are people who thought they had a birthright claim to Canadian citizenship, but subsequently learned that they were mistaken. Their difficulties arose 3 ‘Birth and joy midflight’ Boston Globe, 1 January 2009, available at http:// www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/01/birth_and_ joy_midflight/?page=full