Citizenship, Equality, and Ethnocultural Bias: An Analysis of the German Case

• In Event: Contemplating the Openness and Closure of Citizenship and Borders I

Abstract

A central promise of modern citizenship has always been equality. In contrast to the ancien regime, individual rights no longer depended on one’s status as a nobleman, clergy, commoner, or city dweller but upon one’s status as a citizen. In recent years social scientists and legal scholars have increasingly questioned whether the institution of citizenship still lives up to this ideal (Ellermann 2020, Kochenov 2019) or even if it ever did. This paper will address the question of the extent to which German citizenship laws and policies are discriminatory, particularly along ethnic lines. Germany is an especially interesting case for this question as Germany has long been accused of ethnically discriminatory citizenship laws although there are disputes about when German citizenship laws became discriminatory.

I will analyze discrimination in citizenship in three areas: access to citizenship/naturalization, dual citizenship, and loss of citizenship. Naturalization policies can be discriminatory if applicants of certain ethnicities or countries of origin are favored or if authorities erect particularly high hurdles for disfavored groups of applicants. Regarding dual citizenship, German citizenship law generally demands that naturalizing citizens give up prior nationalities but there are broad exceptions. The question for this paper is whether the implementation of these rules has been discriminatory. Similarly, for loss of citizenship the paper investigates the extent to which revitalized laws on loss of citizenship target particular groups, such as Muslims. The paper will analyze administrative guidelines and regulations as well as naturalization data, parliamentary records, and court cases over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

I expect to show that access to citizenship became less discriminatory over time which is not to say that there is no discrimination today. Discrimination regarding toleration of dual citizenship is more difficult to evaluate as there are pronounced differences across countries of origin but this does not by itself constitute discrimination. For example, under German law dual citizenship is tolerated if seeking release from prior nationalities would be an undue burden. Thus, Germany routinely accepts dual citizenship for Iranians because Iran does not release, or only rarely releases, its citizens from Iranian citizenship. This does not necessarily mean that Iranians are a favored group. Similar to the work of Gibney (2020) on Britain, I find that loss of citizenship tends to target particular groups. Today it is naturalized citizens with dual citizenship from predominantly Muslim countries.

Author

• Claus Hofhansel