Ayelet Shachar

Citizenship as Inherited Property

The global distributive implications of automatically allocating political membership according to territoriality (jus soli) and parentage (jus sanguinis) principles have largely escaped critical scrutiny. This article begins to address this considerable gap. Securing membership status in a given state or region— with its specific level of wealth, degree of stability, and human rights record— is a crucial factor in the determination of life chances. However, birthright entitlements still dominate both our imagination and our laws in the allotment of political membership to a given state. In this article we explore the striking conceptual and legal similarities between intergenerational transfers of citizenship and property. The analogy between inherited citizenship and the intergenerational transfer of property allows us to use existing qualifications found in the realm of inheritance as a model for imposing restrictions on the unlimited and perpetual transmission of membership—with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

Introduction: Citizenship and the ‘Right to Have Rights’

With all the talk about the growing ease of human mobility across borders, if Martians landed on Earth, they might believe that immigration is unrestricted and open to all. Alas, the harsh reality is that not everyone who wishes to leave his or her country of origin will be able to lawfully enter a desired destination country. Barriers to human mobility are still significant and multifaceted. That is not to say, however, that these barriers are equally distributed globally. Passport holders of the European countries that comprise the borderfree Schengen Area, and authorized international visitors enjoy freedom of mobility within the free-zone area, which covers more than 4 million square kilometers and has a population of more than 400 million people. Citizens of other countries that benefit from various bilateral and multilateral visa-waiver programs can also anticipate welcome mats awaiting them in many destinations. Things look quite different, however, for the vast majority of the world’s population, in particular the countless people locked – by chance, and not choice – in the world’s poorer or less stable regions, who face significant, sometimes insurmountable, obstacles to lawful entry into the promised lands of immigration (Castles and Miller 2009; Gamlen and Marsh 2011; Milanovic 2011; Neumayer 2006; Shachar 2009). A crucial task for contemporary scholars of migration and citizenship is to identify the political, institutional, and ideological conditions that define, reify, or unsettle the boundary between inclusion and exclusion, a boundary that bears dramatic consequences for individuals and political communities everywhere (including the classic immigrant democracies – Australia, Canada, and the USA), and that forms the focus of this special issue of Citizenship Studies. Writing in the aftermath of the human rights atrocities visited on millions in the interwar period and during the SecondWorldWar, Hannah Arendt came to see citizenship, the right to belong to some kind of an organized community, as foundational, as the ‘right to have rights’ – the bedrock for fulfilling and protecting our otherwise abstracted human rights (Arendt 1968 [1951], 177; Benhabib 2011). For this reason, observed Arendt, sovereignty ‘is nowhere more absolute than in matters of “emigration, naturalization, nationality, and expulsion”’(Arendt 1968 [1951], 278). How to address the potential contradiction between the sovereign power to exclude and the human need for inclusion in a political community that treats us as equal and worthy of respect and dignity is a perennial dilemma.

Constitutional Transformation, Gender Equality, and Religious/National Conflict in Israel: Tentative Progress Through the Obstacle Course

Open any travelers guidebook about Israel, and you will soon find a photo of a young woman in military uniform carrying a weapon. She is the female solider. Just like her male peers, she is subject to mandatory conscription to the defense forces when she reaches the age of 18. Her image is an emblem of gender equality. Unfortunately, the status of women in Israel does not match the mythology this image suggests. This gap between myth and reality makes Israel a living laboratory for the study of womens rights. As a Jewish and democratic state, it hosts a constant battle over its religious, national and cultural identity, as well as engaging daily with internal and external challenges to its very existence. In each of these struggles, womens rights, among others, are tested to the limit. This chapter provides an overview of the current status of womens rights in Israel. Our intention is to analyze how, why, and under what conditions individual women and feminist organizations have been successful in advancing the gender equality agenda through constitutional rights jurisprudence and legislative initiatives. We also hope to evaluate the limits of such change by addressing the nature of the enduring inequalities that Israeli women still face in navigating the obstacles of a deeply divided society. Our discussion is divided into three major sections. We begin with an outline of pertinent elements of Israels unique constitutional system. Next, we analyze landmark constitutional-rights jurisprudence pertaining to the equal treatment of women in different social contexts, including the military, the home, the public sector, the private labor market, and Israels unique system of religious councils. In this second section, we also address new legislation aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence, as well as combating sexual harassment in the military and in the workplace. In the third section of this chapter, we move on to discuss the intersection of gender, religiosity and nationality in Israel, as well as the complex social and legal status of women as markers of identity in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious polity.

Faith in law?: Diffusing tensions between diversity and equality

This article evaluates demands for privatized diversity that destabilize traditional notions of separation of state and religion, by asking secular authorities to adopt a hands-off, non-interventionist approach, placing civil and family disputes with a religious or cultural aspect beyond the official realm of equal citizenship. This potential storm to come must be addressed head on because it mixes three inflammatory components in today’s political environment: religion; gender; and the rise of a neo-liberal state. The volatility of these issues is undisputed; they require a mere spark to ignite. The standard legal response to this challenge is to seek shelter behind a formidable ‘wall of separation’ between state and religion, even if this implies turning a blind eye to the concerns of religious women – especially those caught in the uncoordinated web of secular and religious marriage bonds. I will advance a different approach. By placing these once-ignored agents at the centre of analysis, this article explores the idea of permitting a degree of regulated interaction between religious and secular sources of identity and obligation, so long as the baseline of citizenship-guaranteed rights remains firmly in place.

Squaring the circle of multiculturalism? Religious freedom and gender equality in Canada

Abstract The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is globally unique in that it includes explicit commitments to the values of multiculturalism and gender equality. Section 27 of the Charter provides that: “[It] shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians,” whereas section 28 states that: “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.” The Canadian experiment (as I will call it) offers us a rare, living laboratory in which a thriving constitutional system searches for legal and institutional pathways to addressing seemingly incongruous demands, obligations, rights, and protections. This article identifies a range of concrete legal responses developed and articulated by Canadian judges and other policymakers in response to claims for fair inclusion raised by members of religious minority communities. Contributing to ongoing theoretical and legal debates, I will conceptualize three variants of such fair inclusion claims. I will then assess what the Canadian multicultural experiment can teach other comparable countries about principled and pragmatic responses to the challenge of “living together” in shared spaces such as workplaces, schools, courthouses, and during citizenship ceremonies. The discussion will then explore the promises and pitfalls of a jurisprudential approach that resists the hierarchy of rights formulas, and tries instead to cover all grounds so as to neither erase diversity nor sacrifice equality.

Talent Matters: Immigration Policy-Setting as a Competitive Scramble Among Jurisdictions

Immigration-destination countries are proactively engaged in efforts to reshape and fine-tune their various admission streams, especially those designed to attract the highly skilled. The global race for talent entails a competitive, multiplayer, and multilevel scramble among jurisdictions, and, once the race for talent has begun, the pressure to engage in targeted recruitment increases, as no country wants to be left behind.

The Birthright Lottery: Response to Interlocutors

Ayelet Shachar engages in dialogue with ten insightful commentaries on her influential book, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009), written by leading experts in the fields of citizenship, immigration, and globalization.

Faith in law

This article evaluates demands for privatized diversity that destabilize traditional notions of separation of state and religion, by asking secular authorities to adopt a hands-off, non-interventionist approach, placing civil and family disputes with a religious or cultural aspect beyond the official realm of equal citizenship. This potential storm to come must be addressed head on because it mixes three inflammatory components in today’s political environment: religion; gender; and the rise of a neo-liberal state. The volatility of these issues is undisputed; they require a mere spark to ignite. The standard legal response to this challenge is to seek shelter behind a formidable ‘wall of separation’ between state and religion, even if this implies turning a blind eye to the concerns of religious women — especially those caught in the uncoordinated web of secular and religious marriage bonds. I will advance a different approach. By placing these once-ignored agents at the centre of analysis, this article explores the idea of permitting a degree of regulated interaction between religious and secular sources of identity and obligation, so long as the baseline of citizenship-guaranteed rights remains firmly in place.

Global Gender Inequality and the Empowerment of Women

Half the Sky:Turning Oppression into Opportunity forWomenWorldwide is a powerful journalistic account of the oppression of women worldwide, and of the ways that some women and men have struggle against this oppression and discovered new forms of economic empowerment. The book—in its eleventh printing in less than a year, and with testimonials from the likes of Angelina Jolie and George Clooney—is also a publishing sensation. Half the Sky brings much attention to an important and timely topic, and it creatively combines narrative, analysis, and policy prescriptions, and so we invited three prominent scholars of gender inequality and development to reflect on the book’s strengths and weaknesses: Ayelet Shachar, Uma Narayan, and Valentine M. Moghadam.

Dangerous Liaisons: Money and Citizenship

Vogue predictions that citizenship is diminishing in relevance or perhaps even vanishing outright, popular among jetsetters who already possess full membership status in affluent democracies, have failed to reach many applicants still knocking on the doors of well-off polities. One can excuse the world’s destitute, those who are willing to risk their lives in search of the promised lands of migration in Europe or America, for not yet having heard the prophecies about citizenship’s decline. But the same is not true for the well-heeled who are increasingly active in the market for citizenship: the ultra-rich from the rest of the world. They are willing to dish out hundreds of thousands of dollars to gain a freshly-minted passport in their new ‘home country.’ That this demand exists is not fully surprising given that this is a world of regulated mobility and unequal opportunity, and a world where not all passports are treated equally at border crossings. Rapid processes of market expansionism have now reached what for many is the most sacrosanct non-market good: membership in a political community. More puzzling is the willingness of governments – our public trustees and legal guardians of citizenship – to engage in processes that come very close to, and in some cases cannot be described as anything but, the sale and barter of membership goods in exchange for a hefty bank wire transfer or large stack of cash.