Search Results

The Relevance of Nationality

Chittharanjan F. Amerasinghe

in Diplomatic Protection

This chapter discusses nationality as a condition for the exercise of diplomatic protection. Topics covered include the determination of nationality, continuous nationality, dual and multiple ... More

This chapter discusses nationality as a condition for the exercise of diplomatic protection. Topics covered include the determination of nationality, continuous nationality, dual and multiple nationality, the effective link theory, and stateless persons and refugees. It shows that the ILC has drafted a provision extending the principles of diplomatic protection adopted for corporations to other legal persons to take account of the different features of each legal person. Draft Article 13 of the ILC provides that the principles governing the State of nationality of corporations and the application of the principle of continuous nationality to corporations, contained in Draft Articles 9 and 10, respectively, apply ‘as appropriate’, to the diplomatic protection of legal persons other than corporations.Less

Mexico: Strategic Birth as Elite Investment

Yossi Harpaz

in Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset

This chapter studies the growth in U.S. dual nationality in Mexico, and specifically the phenomenon of strategic cross-border births. This involves middle- and upper-class Mexican parents who travel ... More

This chapter studies the growth in U.S. dual nationality in Mexico, and specifically the phenomenon of strategic cross-border births. This involves middle- and upper-class Mexican parents who travel to the United States to give birth, aiming to secure U.S. citizenship for their children. The families who engage in this practice typically have little interest in emigrating. Instead, they mainly view the United States as a site of high-prestige consumption and wish to provide their children with easy access to tourism, shopping, and education across the border. The American passport is also an insurance policy that allows easy exit at times of insecurity in Mexico. This strategic acquisition of U.S. dual nationality by upper-class Mexicans can be juxtaposed with another recent trend: the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican undocumented immigrants, who take their U.S.-born children with them to Mexico. For the former group, dual nationality is voluntary and practical; for the latter, it is an imposed disadvantage.Less

Chinese Revolution in Repetition: The Minority Question

Hyun Ok Park

in The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

Chapter 5 interprets the involuntary recollections of the Chinese Cultural Revolution that arose among Korean Chinese while working in South Korea as a sign of the historical repetition of violence.

Congress, the Courts, and the World against Dual Citizenship

Peter J. Spiro

in At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship

This chapter examines the nationality acts of 1940 and 1952. These measures made it almost impossible under U.S. law to actively maintain another nationality without forfeiting one’s U.S. ... More

This chapter examines the nationality acts of 1940 and 1952. These measures made it almost impossible under U.S. law to actively maintain another nationality without forfeiting one’s U.S. citizenship. Many were born in the United States with dual nationality, inheriting the nationality of immigrant parents while acquiring United States citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. As state competition reached the bloody zenith of world wars, it became imperative to keep lines neatly drawn among them. Hair-trigger expatriation rules were the result, under which individuals were stripped of their citizenship for any conduct evidencing ongoing ties to another state. These rules were consistently upheld by the Supreme Court against constitutional challenges so long as the expatriating conduct was undertaken voluntarily, for instance, the mere act of voting in a foreign political election.Less

International Threat, Moral Disgrace

Peter J. Spiro

in At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship

This chapter describes how individuals attempted to exploit dual nationality to their advantage, playing one state of nationality off the other. This was tolerable to U.S. authorities where an ... More

This chapter describes how individuals attempted to exploit dual nationality to their advantage, playing one state of nationality off the other. This was tolerable to U.S. authorities where an individual remained a genuine American; the United States was willing to defend those who were its own in name and in fact against European overreach. However, the price was unacceptably high were a citizen had relocated permanently to another country, often the country of birth, in which he also held nationality. In those cases, the United States sought to shed normal citizens by forcing an election between the two. The policy emerged through the accumulated, sometimes inconsistent practice of State Department officials. After a series of presidential-level entreaties, Congress finally enacted an expatriation measure in 1907 to address cases in which naturalized citizens moved back home – the surprisingly common phenomenon of circular migration. Where official policies left off, social norms kicked in; it was during this period that virulent condemnations of the status were internalized.Less

Socialist Reparation: On Living Labor

Hyun Ok Park

in The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

Chapter 4 approaches Korean Chinese migratory work as a form of socialist reparation that transmutes unfulfilled socialist promises into commodities.

Jurisdiction Ratione Personae

Jorun Baumgartner

in Treaty Shopping in International Investment Law

When raising objections to jurisdiction ratione personae, respondent States have often argued that the investor having brought the claim under a given investment treaty was not the ‘real’ investor ... More

When raising objections to jurisdiction ratione personae, respondent States have often argued that the investor having brought the claim under a given investment treaty was not the ‘real’ investor who would ultimately benefit from a potentially positive outcome of the arbitral proceedings. This has translated into arguing that the tribunal should look for the ‘genuine link’ of the natural investor, or ‘pierce the corporate veil’ of the corporate investor. For locally incorporated claimants bringing an investment claim because of foreign control, the objections have centred on the exact meaning of ‘control’ and of how far up the corporate tier the control should be examined. Respondent States have sometimes also tried to counter claims by invoking the ‘denial of benefits’ clause, yet arbitral tribunals have not been consistent in giving these clauses retrospective or prospective effect. Chapter 4 systematically and in depth examines arbitral decisions that have treated these legal questions.Less

The Feudal Roots and Modern Emergence of Dual Nationality

Peter J. Spiro

in At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship

This chapter describes how the feudal approach to nationality set the stage for major diplomatic disputes between the United States and European governments. In the medieval world most people were ... More

This chapter describes how the feudal approach to nationality set the stage for major diplomatic disputes between the United States and European governments. In the medieval world most people were born and died in the same place; the incidence of dual nationality was near zero, to the point that it was not understood even as a concept. Consistent with the sedentary context – with the prevailing view of the natural order of things, a hierarchy that put all in their place – individuals were considered bound to the sovereign in whose lands they were born on a permanent basis. This regime was a poor match for American independence and the emerging era of trans-Atlantic migration. At the same time that large numbers resettled in the United States, European sovereigns refused to recognize any transfer of allegiance. Those who were naturalized as U.S. citizens were saddled with birth allegiance, with dual nationality as the result. States clashed in their claims over people. These claims sparked public outcry when European states treated naturalized Americans on return visits home for various purposes as if they had never left, including for purposes of military service. In the face of sustained U.S. pressure, important European states began to recognize transfers of nationality through expatriation, extinguishing original nationality upon naturalization in the U.S.Less

150 Years of Transborder Politics: Mexico and Mexicans Abroad

David FitzGerald

in A Century of Transnationalism: Immigrants and Their Homeland Connections

This chapter considers the broad range of Mexican transborder politics to uncover lapsed practices, continuities, and novelties with an eye toward explaining those patterns. Transborder political ... More

This chapter considers the broad range of Mexican transborder politics to uncover lapsed practices, continuities, and novelties with an eye toward explaining those patterns. Transborder political activities of Mexicans in the United States have included projects that ignore U.S. politics, such as agitation for the right to vote in Mexican elections by absentee ballot, as well as activities that engage U.S. politics as a means to accomplish an end in Mexico, such as lobbying in Washington. It is argued that emigrants and exiles have been involved in every major violent conflict and political transformation in Mexico since the 1860s. The changes since the 1920s are the new institutions and pacific goals of transborder politics. At the elite level, technocrats returning from the United States have played an underappreciated role in transforming Mexico since the 1980s. At the level of mass politics, the major shift in the 1990s and 2000s was to institutionalize the promotion of dual loyalty and long-distance engagement through a dual nationality law, extending suffrage abroad, and establishing multiple government agencies to forge ties with migrants sharing a town of origin.Less

The Diplomatic Battle between the Two Chinas

Taomo Zhou

in Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War

This chapter details how, with the People's Republic of China winning Mainland China and the diplomatic recognition of Indonesia, the positions of the Nationalists and Communists reversed. Having ... More

This chapter details how, with the People's Republic of China winning Mainland China and the diplomatic recognition of Indonesia, the positions of the Nationalists and Communists reversed. Having switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, Jakarta nevertheless allowed the Chinese Nationalist Party apparatus to continue its activities until 1958. Jakarta's ambiguous attitude induced a battle for influence between the two rival Chinese governments. As a regime in exile, the Chinese Nationalist government adjusted its past policies to fit the new circumstances resulting from its retreat to Taiwan. Having lost formal diplomatic representation, the Nationalists forged clandestine alliances with the Indonesian right-wing forces through the personal networks of the remaining Chinese Nationalist loyalists. In contrast with Taipei, Beijing prioritized state-to-state diplomacy over its connections to the overseas Chinese. By suspending the activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) among the overseas Chinese and signing the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, Beijing attempted to ease Jakarta's concern that the ethnic Chinese could be used as a Communist fifth column.Less

The Communal Battle between the Red and the Blue

Taomo Zhou

in Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia, and the Cold War

This chapter illustrates the complex issue of citizenship facing the ethnic Chinese as well as the raging competition between pro-Beijing and pro-Taipei factions in the diasporic community. By ... More

This chapter illustrates the complex issue of citizenship facing the ethnic Chinese as well as the raging competition between pro-Beijing and pro-Taipei factions in the diasporic community. By signing the 1955 Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty, Beijing hoped to encourage the assimilation of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and clear the way for the future development of bilateral relations. The treaty marked two fundamental changes. First, Beijing announced that Chinese nationality could no longer be inherited indefinitely and unconditionally through the law of blood. Second, Jakarta no longer automatically recognized all local-born Chinese as Indonesian citizens. Instead, individuals had to take active legal action to acquire Indonesian citizenship if they desired to do so. Yet, due to misinformation, the shortage of legal services, and the inefficiency of Indonesian bureaucracy, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese lost their Indonesian citizenship even though they planned to continue living in Indonesia. Moreover, despite Beijing calling upon the ethnic Chinese to “correct the deep-rooted feelings of racial superiority” and not to regard opting for Indonesian citizenship as “losing face,” many still purposefully repudiated Indonesian citizenship. The chapter then looks at how the pro-People's Republic of China bloc launched aggressive attacks against their pro-Republic of China rivals for control over Chinese-language media, civic associations, and Chinese-medium schools.Less

Enunciations of Transnational Citizenship: Mexican Migrants’ Encounters with Naturalization

Adrián Félix

in Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants

Chapter 2 examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States. This chapter treats naturalization—the so-called ... More

Chapter 2 examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States. This chapter treats naturalization—the so-called political baptism of migrants—as the first stage of the migrant political life cycle insofar as this is the moment where migrants contest state scripts of singular loyalty. Drawing on a political ethnography of the naturalization process and the citizenship classroom, this chapter captures Mexican migrants’ mythologies of citizenship as they collectively expose the central contradictions of U.S. citizenship and constitutionalism. The bureaucratic arbitrariness and institutional discrimination that Mexican migrants perceive throughout the naturalization process infuse their mythologies of citizenship and inform their alternative enunciations of transnational political membership and belonging. When naturalization is sought in response to an antimigrant context, the so-called political baptism of Mexican migrants may in effect mark the political birth of transnational citizens.Less