Overcoming Citizenship: Six Practical Steps for Overcoming the Hierarchy of Nationality

Abstract

The legal concept of citizenship is employed almost exclusively to justify differential treatment of otherwise identically-situated individuals. Legal interventions around the world attempt to mitigate this discrimination. The discriminatory aspects of citizenship may be substantially mitigated by a six-step program: avoid the word citizen; disaggregate its legal consequences; advance transnational human rights as a source of rights; proliferate multiple citizenship; replace naturalization oaths and ceremonies with automatic registration; and ultimately treat all remaining distinction between citizen and noncitizen as suspect, presumed driven by no policy other than hatred or ethnic superiority.

Keywords: immigration and citizenship law, public international law, human rights,global economy