Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices [Paperback]

Thomas Alexander Aleinikoff (Editor), Douglas B. Klusmeyer (Editor), T. Alexander Aleinikoff (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0870031848 | ISBN-13: 978-0870031847

The forms, policies, and practices of citizenship are changing rapidly around the globe, and the meaning of these changes is the subject of deep dispute. Citizenship Today brings together leading experts in their field to define the core issues at stake in the citizenship debates. The first section investigates central trends in national citizenship policy that govern access to citizenship, the rights of aliens, and plural nationality. The following section explores how forms of citizenship and their practice are, can, and should be located within broader institutional structures. The third section examines different conceptions of citizenship as developed in the official policies of governments, the scholarly literature, and the practice of immigrants and the final part looks at the future for citizenship policy. Contributors include Rainer Baubck (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Linda Bosniak (Rutgers University School of Law, Camden), Francis Mading Deng (Brookings Institute), Adrian Favell (University of Sussex, UK), Richard Thompson Ford (Stanford University), Vicki C. Jackson (Georgetown University Law Center), Paul Johnston (Citizenship Project), Christian Joppke (European University Institute, Florence), Karen Knop (University of Toronto), Micheline Labelle (Universit du Qubec Montral), Daniel Sale (Concordia University, Montreal), and Patrick Weil (University of Paris 1, Sorbonne)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

T. Alexander Aleinikoff is senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment's International Migration Policy Program and is also a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Douglas Klusmeyer is associate with the International Migration Policy Program. They are also the editors of From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World (Carnegie Endowment, 2000)

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870031848
• ISBN-13: 978-0870031847
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,342,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All About Rights--Very Little About Loyalty or Duties, June 2, 2001

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Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices (Paperback)

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the most positive side, it is the only, and therefore the best, treatment of the issues of citizenship that I could identify, and that is why I bought it. The range of authoritative essays that have been brought together is very worthy, and anyone contemplating this topic must take this work into account.

On the other hand, as I went through chapter after chapter, what I tended to see was an awful lot of academic whining about how the world is getting too complex and too multi-cultural to be able to pin someone down to just one citizenship, let them have many. Reality check needed here. Governments exist to preserve and protect very specific moral, ideological, and cultural values, and governments are the means by which a Republic finances what are called external diseconomies--those things that are needed for the common good but not profitable for the private sector to do.

There are glimmers here and there of how one might better integrate new immigrants and otherwise promote good citizenship, but overall what this book is missing is a major commitment to thinking about how one draws the line between nationalized citizens truly loyal to their newly chosen nation-state, and those who choose to retain another primary citizenship and simply enjoy the bounty of the land they have chosen to VISIT....

Of all the contributions, the one that stood out for me was by Adrian Favell, on "Integration Policy and Integration Research in Europe: A Review and Critique." Despite the title, the heart of this chapter concerns the information "sources and methods" that underlie conclusions about citizenship and the policies on citizenship. There is a great deal of meat in this chapter, and it could useful guide the next book in what I hope will become a series.

I like this book. It forced me to think and it certainly opened my eyes to how we are letting a whole bunch of people debate the nature of citizenship without ever really being committed to the idea that an oath of loyalty is fundamental--as universal service should be fundamental, not to flesh out the military, but rather to provide a common foundation for knowing one another intimately, for respecting one another from that common ground. How one defines citizenship is fundamental to the future of every nation--this book both enlightens and frightens.