The Human Right to Citizenship

Front matter

INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE LAW SERIES 21

The Human Right To Citizenship Situating the Right to Citizenship within International and Regional Human Rights Law

BRILL | NIJHOFR

Contents

Acknowledgments 1x List of Tables x List of Abbreviations XI

1 Introduction 1 I Citizenship and International Migration — Setting the Problem 1 11 Objective, Scope and Delimitation 5 II Approach and Outlook 7

2 Citizenship and Nationality Terms, Concepts and Rights u I Citizenship or Nationality? A Note on Terminology u I1 The Concept of Citizenship 18 1 Historical Traces of the Concept of Citizenship 18 2 Theoretical Conceptualizations of Citizenship 22 3 Citizenship as a Legal Status 26 31 The Concept of Citizenship in International Law 26 3-2 Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship 30 3.3 Functions of Citizenship 33 ui Citizenship as a Human Right 40 1 Citizenship as Access to (Human) Rights 40 2 Citizenship as a Moral Human Right 42 21 Hannah Arendt’s Right to Have Rights 44 2.2 Seyla Benhabib’s Cosmopolitan Right to Membership 46 2.3 Ruth Rubio-Marin’s Jus Domicilii 48 2.4 Joseph Carens’ Theory of Social Membership 50 2.5 Ayelet Shachar’s Jus Nexi 52 2.6 David Owen’s Right to a Nationality 54 3 Citizenship as a Legal Human Right 55

Introduction

The classic doctrinal position, which viewed nationality as an attribute granted by the state to its subjects, has gradually evolved to the point that nationality is today perceived as involving the jurisdiction of the state as well as human rights issues.

IACtHR, Advisory Opinion on the Proposed Amendments to the Naturalization Provision of the Constitution of Costa Rica, 1984

I Citizenship and International Migration — Setting the Problem

At the end of 2020, 281 million persons lived outside their country of origin.” Migrants make up 3.6% of the global population. This number has grown continuously over the last decade in all world regions, and has grown faster than the world’s overall population. International migration, as these numbers highlight, will continue to shape our societies in the foreseeable future. Directly linked to international migration is the question of citizenship. Alongside territorial borders, citizenship draws a formal line between insiders and outsiders, between those who have an unconditional right to enter and remain in a state and those who remain subject to migration control.? Far from diminishing its practical, societal and political relevance, international migration highlights the role citizenship plays as an ongoing marker of exclusion.*

1 Advisory Opinion on Proposed Amendments to the Naturalization Provision of the Constitution of Costa Rica [1984] IACtHR oc-4/84, Series A No. 4 (1984) para 33.

2 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, International Migration 2020 Highlights, January 2021 <https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development .desa.pd/files/international_migration_2020_highlights_ten_key_messages.pdf>.

3 See on the use of the terms ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ Chapter 2, 1.

4 Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Citizens’ Rights and the Right to Be a Citizen (Brill Nijhoff 2014) 131. See also Catherine Dauvergne, ‘Citizenship with a Vengeance’ (2007) 8 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 489; Ayelet Shachar, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press 2009) 2 ff.

© BARBARA VON RUTTE, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004517523_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc BY-NC 4.0 license.

For individuals, citizenship — or nationality — remains a crucial prerequisite for the effective enjoyment of many human rights and for accessing institutions that secure these rights. Citizenship guarantees political rights, an unconditional right to enter and remain in the state of citizenship and to move freely within its borders, and access to protection and the services of that state.” While it is clear that citizenship alone does not ensure substantive equality and actual belonging, a person's citizenship remains central to her prospects in life, her international mobility and her chances to have effective access to protection and basic economic rights. Importantly, one’s citizenship has a direct impact on mobility rights, the possibility to migrate to another country and the right to remain in that country.? At the other end of the spectrum, statelessness — the status of a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law!° — leaves a person in a legal limbo and in a particularly vulnerable situation." Given the importance of nationality for one’s realities and chances in life, it is not surprising that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recognizes citizenship as part of a person’s social identity protected by the right to private life.12

For states, the question of who belongs to their people is equally central. Citizenship determines who can enter and stay in a state, who belongs to the demos and for whom a state is responsible vis-à-vis other states. In times of increasing global migration the question of access to and loss of nationality, moreover, is an important aspect of migration governance: shall migrants be

5 See on the terminology used Chapter 2, 1.

6 Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, ‘General Recommendation No. 32 on the Gender-Related Dimensions of Refugee Status, Asylum, Nationality and Statelessness of Women’ (CtteeEDAW 2014) UN Doc. CEDAW/C/GC/32 para 51. See also Ruth Rubio-Marin, ‘Introduction: Human Rights and the Citizen/Non- Citizen Distinction Revisited’ in Ruth Rubio-Marin (ed), Human Rights and Immigration (Oxford University Press 2014) 10.

8 Shachar famously described citizenship as a “birthright lottery’, see Shachar, The Birthright Lottery (n 4).

9 E Tendayi Achiume, ‘Migration as Decolonization’ (2019) 71 Stanford Law Review 1509, 1530 f.

10 Article 1 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (‘1954 Convention, ‘css’).

11 See Laura van Waas, Nationality Matters: Statelessness under International Law (Intersentia 2008).

12 Genovese v Malta [201] ECtHR Application No. 53124/09 para 33; Mennesson v France [2014] ECtHR Application No. 65192/1 para 97; Labassee v France [2014] ECtHR Application No. 65941/11 para 76; Ramadan v Malta [2016] ECtHR Application No. 76136/ 12 para 62.

INTRODUCTION 3 included into society and granted citizenship or shall the terms of access to nationality be shaped in a restrictive way with the consequence of a growing number of non-citizen! residents?! What are the consequences of inclusive compared to exclusive citizenship regimes for migration and democracy?!®

New forms of migration and mobility accentuate this tension. Domestic nationality laws are confronted with diverging biographies of migrants and changing patterns of migration and mobility. Against that background, the regulation of acquisition and loss of citizenship remains a controversial political question in many states. Nationality regimes are subject to frequent change and revision.!® Some reforms aim at liberalizing access to citizenship.!”

With the term non-citizens, 1 refer generally to so-called foreigners, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, irregular migrants and others who do not have the citizenship of the state in which they are present. See also David Weissbrodt, The Human Rights of Non-Citizens (Oxford University Press 2008) 1 f. The term ‘alien’ is only used in case the original source has this terminology.

See also Joel P Trachtman, ‘Fragmentation of Citizenship Governance’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 600. See on for the effects of such policies eg Jens Hainmueller, Dominik Hangartner and Giuseppe Pietrantuono, ‘Catalyst or Crown: Does Naturalization Promote the Long-Term Social Integration of Immigrants?’ (2017) 11 American Political Science Review 256; Irene Bloemraad and Alicia Sheares, ‘Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?’ (2017) 51 International Migration Review 823. See eg Marc Helbling, Stephan Simon and Samuel D Schmid, ‘Restricting Immigration to Foster Migrant Integration? A Comparative Study Across 22 European Countries’ (2020) 46 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2603; Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen and others, ‘Roadblocks to Citizenship: Selection Effects of Restrictive Naturalisation Rules’ (2021) 47 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1047; Arnfinn H Midtbgen and others, ‘Assessments of Citizenship Criteria: Are Immigrants More Liberal?’ (2020) 46 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2625.

See exemplarily for the year 2018 Lorenzo Piccoli, ‘2018: A Year in Citizenship’ (GLOBALCIT, 8 March 2019) <http://globalcit.eu/2018-a-year-in-citizenship/>.

In the European context, Germany famously introduced a jus soli mechanism for children born in Germany in 2000. In 2014, it removed the ‘duty to choose’ (Optionspflicht) for children who grew up in Germany and allowed for dual or multiple citizenship. See eg Michael Deinhard, Das Recht der StaatsangehGrigkeit unter dem Einfluss globaler Migrationserscheinungen (BWV, Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag 2015) 136 ff; Kay Hailbronner and others (eds), StaatsangehGrigkeitsrecht (6. Aufl., cH Beck 2017) 4 ff. Similarly, Portugal adopted a new, more inclusive nationality law including a jus soli mechanism in 2018, see Ana Rita Gil, ‘Amendments to the Portuguese Nationality Law — Towards an (Even) More Inclusive Citizenship’ GLOBALCIT (1 August 2018) <http://globalcit.eu/amendme nts-to-the-portuguese-nationality-law-towards-an-even-more-inclusive-citizenship/>. Switzerland in 2017 introduced a jus soli mechanism for third generation migrants, see Barbara von Riitte, ‘Die erleichterte Einbürgerung für Jugendliche der dritten Generation’ [2017] Jusletter vom 20. Marz 2017. Norway and Denmark introduced dual citizenship, see Arnfinn H Midtbgen, ‘No Longer the “Last Man Standing”: Norway Decides to Allow Dual

CHAPTER 1

Often though, new legislative projects tighten naturalization requirements!® or expand denationalization powers, thereby reinforcing the exclusionary potential of citizenship.?°

Rarely, however, are political discourses about citizenship framed as human rights issues.?! This could come as a surprise, given that the right to citizenship is codified as a human right in one of the most important human rights

Citizenship’ GLOBALCIT (9 January 2019) <http://globalcit.eu/no-longer-the-last-man -standing-norway-decides-to-allow-dual-citizenship/>; Global Citizenship Observatory GLOBALCIT, ‘Denmark: The Law on Dual Citizenship Came into Effect on 1 September’ GLOBALCIT (1 September 2015) <http://globalcit.eu/denmark-the-law-on-dual-citizens hip-comes-into-effect-on-1-september/>.

Eg in Switzerland the revised Federal Act on Swiss Citizenship, 20 June 2014, SR 141.0 (‘sca’) reduced the residence requirement but overall introduced higher thresholds for naturalization, see Barbara von Riitte, ‘Das neue Biirgerrechtsgesetz’ [2017] Anwaltsrevue 202. In Austria residence requirements for refugee were increased, see Gerd Valchars, ‘Verscharfung fiir Ungewollte’ Der Standard (Wien, 9 July 2018) <https://www.derstand ard.at/story/2000083140556/verschaerfung-fuer-ungewollte>. In the US, the Trump Administration repeatedly stressed plans to restrict jus soli as part of their anti-immigration agenda, Patrick J Lyons, ‘Trump Wants to Abolish Birthright Citizenship. Can He Do That?’ The New York Times (New York, 22 August 2019) <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/ us/birthright-citizenship-14th-amendment-trump.html>.

Amongst others Australia, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK have introduced provisions allowing expanding state powers to deprive nationality in the context of national security measures, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and Global Citizenship Observatory GLOBALCIT, ‘Instrumentalising Citizenship in the Fight against Terrorism. A Global Comparative Analysis of Legislation on Deprivation of Nationality as a Security Measure’ (2022) <https://files.institutesi.org/Instrumentalising_Citizenship_Global_Trends_Rep ort.pdf>. See also Laura van Waas and Sangita Jaghai, ‘All Citizens Are Created Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others’ (2018) 65 Netherlands International Law Review 413, 419; Leslie Esbrook, ‘Citizenship Unmoored: Expatriation as a Counter-Terrorism Tool’ (2016) 37 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 1273; Global Citizenship Observatory GLOBALCIT, ‘New Citizenship Deprivation Rules in the Wake of Paris Attacks’ GLOBALCIT (9 December 2015) <http://globalcit.eu/new-citizenship-depr ivation-rules-in-the-wake-of-paris-attacks/>; Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Withdrawing Nationality as a Measure to Combat Terrorism: A Human Rights- Compatible Approach?’ (PACE 2019) Report Doc. 14790 (2019) para 23 ff. In France plans to expand deprivation powers were dropped, see Global Citizenship Observatory GLOBALcit, ‘Hollande Drops Plans to Revoke Citizenship of Terrorism Suspects’ GLOBALCIT (30 March 2016) <http://globalcit.eu/hollande-drops-plans-to-revoke-citizenship-of-terror ism-suspects/>.

See eg Midtbgen and others (n 15) 4; Ayelet Shachar, ‘Beyond Open and Closed Borders: The Grand Transformation of Citizenship’ (2020) u Jurisprudence 1, 13 ff. See also Rubio-Marin, ‘Introduction’ (n 6) 1 ff.

See also Hirsch Ballin (n 4) 131.

INTRODUCTION 5 instruments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)?*. Article 15 UDHR states:

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) Noone shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Regardless of this provision, states continue to see citizenship as a sovereign privilege and contest the legal validity of the right to a nationality as a human right. In the absence of a rights-based understanding of citizenship, noncitizens are left in a weak position when claiming access to the nationality of a particular state based on the right to nationality. Why is that? Why are domestic nationality laws so often very exclusionary and the granting of citizenship by way of naturalization considered to be a privilege? What is there to say about the rapidly re-emerging practice of denationalization in the context of counter-terrorism measures? It is this tension between the recognition of the right to nationality in international human rights law and the continuing assertion of sovereignty in nationality matters by states that forms the subject of this book.

II Objective, Scope and Delimitation

By juxtaposing the normative claim for a right to citizenship against contemporary human rights law, this book explores the right to citizenship from an individual rights perspective. Taking a human rights approach, it seeks to delimit the boundaries of state sovereignty in nationality matters and to identify the contours of the human right to citizenship from the perspective of the individual, looking not only at statelessness, deprivation of citizenship or dual citizenship, but more broadly at acquisition, loss and enjoyment of citizenship in a migration context.” The book explores the existence, the scope and the content of the right to citizenship in international human rights law and discusses the rights it entails for individuals and, conversely, the obligations it imposes on states. It highlights the ways in which international law grants individuals concrete rights and entitlements in nationality matters. Thereby,

22 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948, adopted by General Assembly Resolution 217 A(111) (‘UDHR’).

23 Similarly also James A Goldston, ‘Holes in the Rights Framework: Racial Discrimination, Citizenship, and the Rights of Noncitizens’ (2006) 20 Ethics & International Affairs 321, 341.

it critically reflects on the limitations of state sovereignty in the regulation of citizenship imposed by international human rights law.

The book aims to provide a principled interpretation of the right to citizenship as an effective and enforceable individual human right. On the basis of the analysis of the international legal framework, the book argues that the right to citizenship: aims at protecting fandamental characteristics of the human person; is consistent with the existing body of international human rights law; is sufficiently precise to give rise to identifiable and predictable rights; and is supported by the case law of human rights implementing bodies, namely treaty bodies and human rights tribunals. Access to nationality, including naturalization, should be understood in a context of legal entitlements instead of a discretionary ‘pick-and-choose’ of prospective citizens by states. This is complemented with a normative argument: the protection gaps left open under current international law should be closed by recognizing a right to the citizenship of a specific state on the basis of one’s effective connection to that state according to the principle of jus nexi. Applying the jus nexi principle of membership in order to determine conditions under which individuals should have an enforceable right to acquire (or retain) the citizenship of the state to which they have a significant connection would significantly strengthen the enforcement of the right to citizenship.**

The study is based on two basic premises. First, as will be discussed at length in the following, I consider citizenship to be a central element of a person’s social identity and essential for the protection of a person’s fundamental human rights, as well as constitutive for the functioning of modern democracies.?5 Given the importance of citizenship, states should not only prevent and reduce statelessness. They should equally ensure that individuals have an effective and meaningful nationality.2® Second, the study builds on the premise that our current political and legal system — including the international legal framework for the protection of human rights — is based on the existence of nation states.2” The legitimacy of nation states, territorial borders and nationality can certainly, and rightly so, be questioned.?® Nevertheless, this is

24 Shachar, The Birthright Lottery (n 4). See on the principle of jus nexi Chapter 2, 111.2.5 as well as in detail Chapter 6.

25 See in more detail Chapter 2, 111.

26 See in more detail Chapter 6.

27 See also Bloemraad and Sheares (n 14) 826.

28 See eg Achiume (n 9); Andreas Cassee, Globale Bewegungsfreiheit: ein philosophisches Plädoyer für offene Grenzen (Suhrkamp 2016); Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint (Oxford University Press 2015).

INTRODUCTION 7 not as such the subject of this study. Rather, for the purposes of this study, I acknowledge the existence of nation states and present my findings based on the current legal—political order of territorial states.

Nationality as a cross-cutting issue touches upon different fields of law. It is a classical matter of international law, as it determines which individuals belong to one state or another and, thus, concerns the relationship between states. Secondly, it governs the relationship between an individual and their state of nationality on the internal, domestic level. This is traditionally a matter of national constitutional law.?9 Thirdly, nationality is also a human rights issue. This is the focus of this book. It examines the right of individuals to a nationality, covering acquisition, enjoyment, change and loss of nationality. Going beyond statelessness, the book also covers the rights of persons that have a nationality in acquiring another nationality, or persons that are confronted with losing their nationality even if this does not immediately threaten to render them stateless. It does not, however, discuss the rights and status granted to non-citizens that come close to citizenship.3° Moreover, I do not address the rights of non-citizens to access a certain territory or legal status aside from nationality, even though access to the territory is an important prerequisite for accessing citizenship.*!

III Approach and Outlook

This book pursues theoretical, doctrinal legal research based on a humanrights approach.®? The relevant existing legal standards on nationality are identified, examined in their historical and current context, and thoroughly evaluated in order to identify the rights of individuals and the corresponding

29 See on the link between citizenship and constitutions Jo Shaw, The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times (Bristol University Press 2020).

30 Namely forms of quasi-citizenship, permanent residency or denizenship which entail certain rights that traditionally were reserved for citizens.

31 I acknowledge the risk that easing the rules for accessing citizenship might move the pressure of migration control to the physical borders to prevent non-citizens from accessing the territory in the first place.

32 Morel defines rights-based approaches as “based on the idea that every human being is both a person and a rights-holder, empowered to claim the rights he or she is entitled to against duty-bearers’, Michèle Morel, The Right Not to Be Displaced in International Law (Intersentia 2014) 23. See also UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants’ (Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants 2016) UN Doc. A/71/285 para 30.

obligations of states as the duty-bearers. The sources for the relevant standards on nationality taken into consideration are — in accordance with Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)?? — international conventions, international custom and general principles of law.*4 In addition, soft law instruments of relevant international organizations, namely the UN with its different bodies — but also regional bodies such as, for example, the Council of Europe (CoE) or the African Union (AU) — are included. Judicial decisions and legal scholarship serve as an additional, subsidiary means for interpreting the legal instruments (Article 38(1)(d) 1cj-Statute). This covers decisions by the quasi-judicial UN human rights treaty bodies, namely the UN Human Rights Committee (HRCttee), the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CtteeRC), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CtteeEDAW), and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CtteeERD) which, on an optional basis, can review individual complaints against state parties,?> as well as regional human rights monitoring bodies and courts such as the ECtHR, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) or the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACmHPR). I am aware that these sources have varying normative weight and not always the same geographical application. Nevertheless, the sources taken into consideration are the most progressive or protective standards for the rights of non-citizens relating to nationality and provide the benchmark for a rights-based interpretation of the right to nationality.3°

This being said, the book conducts an in-depth analysis at the macro-level of international law. The national perspective is beyond the scope of this study. Consequently, national legislation, policies and case law are not systematically analyzed but only selectively taken into consideration where relevant for a better understanding of the implementation of international standards at the domestic level.?” Beyond the legal doctrinal approach, the study suggests a broader interpretation of the right to citizenship based on the principle of jus

33 Statute of the International Court of Justice of 26 June 1945, 892 UNTS 19 (‘ICJ-Statute’).

34 See generally on the relevance of the different sources of law in international human rights law also Bruno Simma and Philip Alston, ‘The Sources of Human Rights Law: Custom, Jus Cogens, and General Principles’ (1988) 12 Australian Yearbook of International Law 82.

35 Gali, Costello and Cunnighamn refer to the UN Treaty Bodies as “soft courts’, see Bagak Cali, Cathryn Costello and Stewart Cunnighamn, ‘Hard Protection through Soft Courts? Non-Refoulement before the United Nations Treaty Bodies’ (2020) 21 German Law Journal 355) 356.

36 See for a similar approach Weissbrodt (n 13) 5 ff.

37 See Shaw, The People in Question (n 29).

INTRODUCTION 9 nexi and maps the implications of such interpretation.3® Given the inherent political character of citizenship and its regulation, a broader interdisciplinary perspective is indispensable. Hence, while this study is first and foremost a legal analysis, it also draws on the debates of neighboring academic disciplines in order to contextualize the regulation of citizenship in international law and to motivate the claim for the recognition of citizenship as a human right.

The book is structured in three main parts and seven chapters. The first part provides the background for the analysis and lays out the theoretical framework for the conceptualization of citizenship and its function in international law. After this introduction, Chapter 2 sets the terminological and theoretical frame for the subsequent analysis of the right to citizenship in international law. It clarifies the notions of ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ and explains their use for the purposes of the book. Turning to the concepts of nationality and citizenship, it provides an overview of the historical evolution of the concept of citizenship. On that basis, it defines the concept of citizenship used in the book as a legal status, a relationship between an individual and a state that, despite the existence of internationally protected human rights applicable irrespective of citizenship, secures important rights and imposes certain obligations. In a third part, the chapter looks at the human rights dimension of citizenship and explores different theoretical accounts of citizenship as a (moral) human right. This provides the theoretical basis for the subsequent discussion — whether the right to citizenship is also a legal human right.

Chapter 3 complements the first, theoretical part of the book by adding a public international law perspective. It shifts the focus from normative accounts of the right to citizenship to the legal framework and looks at the historical evolution of the regulation of nationality in public international law. The chapter aims at providing the broader legal framework for the discussion on the human right to citizenship by highlighting the linkages between nationality and the very foundational concepts of statehood and sovereignty. It starts with a discussion of the interrelationship between statehood, sovereignty and nationality, and explains the traditional perception of nationality as a matter within states’ domaine réservé. The second part of the chapter questions this paradigm based on an analysis of the evolution of the regulation of nationality matters in international law throughout the 2oth century.

The second part of this book focuses on the regulation of the right to nationality in international law and provides a comprehensive analysis of the current legal framework and its interpretation by international and regional courts

38 See in more detail Chapter 6, 11.

and treaty bodies. A critical evaluation of this framework allows to identify the protection and accountability gaps which undermine the effectiveness and enforceability of the right to citizenship in practice. First, Chapter 4 zooms in on the international legal framework codifying the right to nationality. It starts with a discussion of the codification of the right to nationality in Article 15 UDHR. This provision still represents the starting point for the recognition of the right to nationality in international human rights law. This is followed by a mapping of the relevant human rights instruments at the universal as well as at the regional level that codify a right to nationality — directly or indirectly based on the interpretation of other guarantees. The chapter concludes by discussing whether the right to nationality or certain aspects of it have acquired the rank of customary international law.

Based on this framework, Chapter 5 analyzes the nature, scope and content of the right to a nationality as currently protected by international law. It begins by qualifying the right to nationality as a civil and political right and then turns to its scope of application. A third section identifies the different rights and obligations that can be derived from the right to nationality along the lines of the main aspects of the right — the acquisition, change, loss and enjoyment of nationality — but also transversal obligations and procedural standards that apply to all aspects of the right to nationality. This is followed by a discussion of the conditions for lawful interferences with the right to nationality. The analysis of the scope and content of the right to nationality shows that the right to nationality entails different specific rights and obligations states must observe when regulating acquisition and loss of nationality.

In the third part, Chapter 6 turns to the protection gaps that remain unaddressed by the current legal framework and offers a normative critique of the current international legal framework and puts forward an alternative, rights-based interpretation of the right to citizenship based on the principle of jus nexi. The chapter shows how the principle of jus nexi relates to international citizenship and international human rights law and outlines how the principle could be applied to strengthen the right to citizenship. Finally, the chapter discusses the possible implications of a jus nexi-based right to citizenship for the scope and content of the right, as well as for the possibility of lawfully interfering with the right.

Chapter 7 recapitulates the questions addressed in this study, presents a summary of the main findings and ends with concluding remarks on how the proposal of a jus nexi-based right to citizenship could be implemented.