2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) generations, which hardly seems to be normatively justifiable. 32 So even if there were a legitimate end, the rule would not be likely to succeed on a nondiscrimination test. However, in the Hungarian case, the rule would immediately fail the heightened scrutiny test because a legitimate end cannot be identified. What is working in the background is a nation-building project: a project that is based on the post-territorial concept of the nation, which seeks to revisit history to the extent possible (i.e. by indirectly questioning existing state borders), 33 and that establishes the desired past through the means of citizenship policies. As Shaw’s book demonstrates, the idea of granting citizenship to trans-border co-ethnics is not unknown in the democratic world; 34 it is still a part of the repertoire of the internationally recognised kin-state politics. However, national populists reinterpret the concept of citizenship and make non-residential ethnic citizenship central to their citizenship politics. Thus, the populist understanding of citizenship remains different from constitutional citizenship. For example, the Hungarian policy de-territorialises citizenship and strengthens a nationalistic idea of sovereignty by ethnoculturally redefining peoplehood. In this, the Hungarian policy is more similar to the Russian extraterritorial measures rather than to its democratic counterparts applied in many European countries. Historically, Hungarians were dominant nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russians were dominant nationalities in the Soviet Union. Hence, they both were viewed as ‘imperial minorities’ in the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Soviet Union. 35 Today, both have large ‘external kin’ populations. Russia offers non-residential citizenship in the post-Soviet region, and in the recent past, the ‘protection of fellow trans-border citizens’ served as a pretext for Russia’s intervention in its neighbouring countries. The Hungarian citizenship rule offers non-residential citizenship for all transborder co-ethnics, and there is a danger that, in the long run, this policy may serve as a tool to reclaim ‘lost ’ Hungarian populations and, ultimately, to reclaim the land. 32 33 34 35 Given the size of Austro-Hungarian Empire, contemporary citizens of Slovakia or Croatia would formally be eligible to apply for Hungarian citizenship. Paul Blokker and Kriszta Kovács, ‘Hungarian Citizenship and Franchise Politics and Their Effects on the Hungarian– Romanian Relations’ in Dimitry Kochenov and Elena Baseska (eds), The Principle of Good Neighbourly Relations in Europe: Theory and Practice (Brill Nijhoff 2015). As Zsolt Körtvélyesi puts it, the rule is meant ‘to cover Csangos in Romania whose ascendants are supposed to have been left what was then the Kingdom of Hungary centuries ago’. Körtvélyesi (n 17) 784. János Kis argues that the Fundamental Law’s commitment to ‘preserve our nation’s intellectual and spiritual unity, torn apart in the storms of the last century’ is an irredentist claim because there is no reference to the recognition of the current state borders. János Kis, ‘Introduction: From the 1989 Constitution to the 2011 Fundamental Law’ in Gábor A Tóth (ed), Constitution for a Disunited Nation: On Hungary’s 2011 Fundamental Law (Central European University Press 2012) 1. Shaw (n 1) 31. Zsuzsa Csergő and James M Goldgeier, ‘Kin-State Activism in Hungary, Romania, and Russia: The Politics of Ethnic Demography’ in Tristan J Mabry et al (eds), Divided Nations and European Integration (University of Pennsylvania Press 2013) 89, 93. 394