Catherine Dauvergne

Citizenship with a Vengeance

This Article situates contemporary shifts in citizenship law within a story of the relationship of globalization and illegal migration. The central argument is that citizenship as a formal legal status is enjoying a resurgence of authority at present. This mirrors the paradoxical nature of globalization itself: along the vector of citizenship, both inclusions and exclusions are increasing at present. As states are increasingly unable to assert exclusive power in a range of policy domains, immigration and citizenship law are transformed into a last bastion of sovereignty. Many shifts in citizenship law are explained through an understanding of how migration law and citizenship law work in tandem to form the border of the national community. Recent changes in citizenship law respond to two trends: a crackdown on extra-legal migration and a desire to reassert authority over diasporic populations. While the focus of the Article is on citizenship as a formal legal status, the importance of amnesty programs for extra-legal migrants demonstrates that ultimately the bifurcation of formal and substantive citizenship is untenable.

Studying Migration Governance from the Bottom-Up

This chapter develops a methodology for studying variations in how deportation is or is not enforced. The work analyzes instances of local resistance to deportation initiatives across a range of different countries and aims to understand how local politics relate to national politics and why local politics matter.

Tales of Two Nations: Australian Citizenship Law in Context and Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State and American Citizenship

These two 2002 books about citizenship in Australia and the United States look at first blush to be very different, almost, as the two nations they describe, incomparable. Alexander Aleinikoffs Semblances of Sovereignty is a detailed, nuanced argument about constitutional interpretation set in the context of arguably the most examined constitution in the world. Kim Rubensteins book, on the other hand, is a compendious gathering of meanings and significations of citizenship in Australian public law, the first such endeavor. It is not, indeed cannot be, about constitutional interpretation. In part, it is the differences between the American and Australian constitutions that make each of these books right for their time. Most compelling, putting them side by side, is the thematic similarities between them and the ways that each could be read in response to the other. Rubenstein and Aleinikoff are lawyers, and each book is a legal argument for change in the law. What grounds the argument, in each case, is an understanding of the relationship between citizenship, identity, national community and the constitution. Both authors focus strongly on the importance of the constitution as a symbolic foundation of the national community. The importance of citizenship to the constitution partially derives in each argument from the place of popular sovereignty in constitutional and community legitimation. Without this legitimation constitutional symbolism is weakened or fails. It is for this reason that Rubenstein links her calls for considering the place of citizenship in the constitution to Australias republican debate. As Australians consider whether to formally mark the change from monarchal sovereignty to popular sovereignty which has long since occurred, Rubenstein asserts the question of citizenship should necessarily arise. This points to the central reason that the books differ: the American constitution contains a strong statement of birthright citizenship which has been central to constitutional interpretation in the twentieth century;