Iseult Honohan

Reconsidering the Claim to Family Reunification in Migration

A high proportion of legal immigration is based on family reunification. On one view, this is based on a partialist preference towards citizens, and the universally grounded claims of refugees should be given at least equal consideration. This article focuses on reconsidering the justification for considering family reunification a particularly important criterion for admission and residence, without attempting to establish how exactly family and refugee claims should be balanced. It first considers arguments for and against giving substantial weight in migration to family members with respect to citizens and denizens, the state and incomers. These include, on the one hand, the intrinsic value of and right to family life, the possibility of integration and the agent-specific nature of the obligations involved, and, on the other, the anachronistic nature of the family claim, the extent to which migration is voluntary, the contemporary prevalence of transnational family relationships, the inheritance of privilege and the multiplier effect of family reunification. It next considers the justification for discriminating among family applicants in order to reduce family migration numbers by restricting admission to the immediate nuclear family, and examines whether this represents unwarranted cultural discrimination or runs counter to the fundamental reasons for respecting family life. It is argued that family reunification is best justified in terms not of a partialist preference towards fellow citizens, but of a universal obligation to allow those subject to the states authority to maintain intimate relationships that entail agent-specific obligations of care. This justifies very substantial consideration for at least certain kinds of family reunification. If, in order to meet other claims, we should discriminate among family members, priority should attach to family relationships of care at ‘critical times’, rather than to nuclear family membership per se.

Citizenship Attribution in a New Country of Immigration: Ireland

This article examines how the change in Irelands demographic condition from a country of emigration to one of large-scale immigration has affected citizenship attribution. The article outlines the origin of Irish citizenship laws, with particular reference to the pure ius soli system applied to those born on the island of Ireland until 2005. While significant changes in citizenship attribution have emerged in response to increasing immigration, the specific character of these changes has been shaped also by other forces, including the issue of Northern Ireland, the relationship of the Republic of Ireland to the UK, and the development and expansion of the European Union. These have influenced recent notable changes in the attribution of citizenship at birth and on the basis of marriage, and proposed changes in requirements for naturalisation. The article examines whether and to what extent these changes represent a convergence towards a European norm and whether they signify a changing conception of citizenship in Ireland.

Friends, Strangers or Countrymen? The Ties between Citizens as Colleagues

Some analogies are better than others for understanding the ties and responsibilities between citizens of a state. Citizens are better understood as particular kinds of colleagues than as either strangers or members of close-knit communities such as family or friends. Colleagues are diverse, separate and relatively distant individuals whose involuntary interdependence as equals in a practice or institution creates common concerns; this entails special responsibilities of communication, consideration and trust, which are capable of extension beyond the immediate group. Citizens likewise are involuntarily interdependent in political practices, and have comparable concerns and obligations that are more substantial than liberal advocates of constitutional patriotism recommend. But these are distinct from and potentially more extensible than those between co-nationals sharing a common culture, which are proposed by nationalists and some communitarians. The relationship of citizens is a more valid ground for associative obligations than others apart from family and friends.

Should Irish Emigrants Have Votes? External voting in Ireland

Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe not to offer some form of suffrage to its citizens who live abroad permanently. By contrast, it has been a front-runner in the trend towards providing more liberal voting regimes for resident non-citizens, as since 1963 it has allowed all residents for the previous 6 months to vote and stand in local elections. This paper considers the normative case for and against external voting, the current comparative context of its increasing provision among European countries and the range of ways in which voting rights abroad combine with the extensibility of citizenship by descent abroad. Addressing the Irish case, it argues that there is no basis for a general right to vote for external citizens, but that, none the less, persisting connections and the rate of return migration give some reason to grant votes to first-generation emigrants, if differently weighted from those of resident citizens.

Domination and migration: an alternative approach to the legitimacy of migration controls

Freedom as non-domination provides a distinctive criterion for assessing the justifiability of migration controls, different from both freedom of movement and autonomy. Migration controls are dominating insofar as they threaten to coerce potential migrants. Both the general right of states to control migration, and the wide range of discretionary procedures prevalent in migration controls, render outsiders vulnerable to arbitrary power. While the extent and intensity of domination varies, it is sufficient under contemporary conditions of globalization to warrant limits on states’ discretion with respect to admission. Reducing domination requires, rather than removing all immigration restrictions or democratically justifying them to all, that there be certain constraints on states’ freedom to control migration: giving migrants a publicly secured status somewhat analogous to that enjoyed by citizens, subjecting migration controls to higher legal regulation, and making immigration policies and decision contestable by those who are subject to them.

Republican Requirements for Access to Citizenship

What are legitimate conditions for naturalization from a republican perspective? I argue that if citizenship is understood as membership in a self-governing community, some boundaries are justified, but the conditions for membership need not be as stringent as those currently becoming the norm in many Western states. Republican citizenship is quite demanding: it requires a capacity to communicate, an awareness of interdependence among citizens, a sense of responsibility to the wider society and an inclination to engage deliberatively with others in public debate. Thus, on a republican view, the state may promote these through civic education for all citizens. Nonetheless, on this conception, citizenship may be acquired almost automatically by dint of long-term residence. The state may require participation in language classes and in certain practical political exercises for applicants for citizenship. But it does not follow that applicants should be required to achieve particular fixed standards in tests of knowledge, skills or values. Few conditions not required of native-born citizens should be required of those naturalizing, and these should be more a matter of participation than of skills or identity.

Religion and education in Ireland: growing diversity - or losing faith in the system?

This paper examines the evolution of the state-supported denominational education system in Ireland in the context of increasing social diversity, and considers the capacity for incremental change in a system of institutional pluralism hitherto dominated by a single religion. In particular, we examine challenges to the historical arrangements emerging in two recent contentious issues: cuts in special funding for Protestant secondary schools and proposed diversification of the patronage of primary schools, revealing pressures on the dominant role of the Catholic Church and on the privileged place of religion in education. We identify a shift towards a more varied pluralism, or greater ‘diversity of schools’, in which multi- or non-denominational schools now feature more prominently, rather than towards either a secular system or privileged recognition of religious schools. These developments entail a change in the historical balance of religious equality and freedoms: from leaning more towards collective religious freedom and equality among religions, to tilting more towards individual religious freedom and non-discrimination. Yet the limited possibilities of incremental change are suggested by delays in changes of patronage, and the emerging balance displays continuing tensions between individual and collective freedom, clustered around ‘diversity in schools’: the integration of religion in the curriculum, religious instruction in the school day, and the accommodation of children and teachers of other beliefs in religious schools.

Introduction: Domination, migration and non-citizens

In Europe and other regions of the world public debate concerning how many immigrants should be admitted, which rights those admitted should have, and which conditions can be required for access to citizenship is intense and enduring, and these have increasingly become central electoral issues. On the one hand, the harsh treatment of migrants is often a matter of public criticism; on the other hand, states are concerned about problems of welfare, security and social unrest that they have come to associate with large-scale migration. At its most fundamental level, this debate concerns the question of how best to balance particularist principles of democratic self-determination and state sovereignty and universalist principles of individual freedom and human rights. The articles in this special issue examine whether the concept of domination can cast a distinctive light on the normative issues arising in this tension between state sovereignty and universal principles with respect to migration and the position of non-citizens in contemporary liberal democratic states. These issues arise both externally insofar as foreigners are subject to migration controls, and internally insofar as migrants live in states of which they are not full members. The issue thus examines the potential of domination as a concept to bring to bear on issues of migration controls, differential residence statuses and access to membership. In the recent elaboration of neo-republican political theory, articulated notably by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, domination is defined in terms of subjection to the threat of arbitrary interference (Pettit 1997, 2012, Skinner 1998, 2008). The corresponding notion of freedom is broader than the negative conception of freedom, and requires not just the absence of interference, but protection against the threat of arbitrary interference. This account of freedom, broadly derived from the republican tradition, is understood to require certain kinds of institutional structures that guarantee the equal status of citizens, and protect them from arbitrary or discretionary exercises of power. The status of citizenship is thus central to the idea of freedom as non-domination, which is

Toleration and non-domination

The need for toleration is understood to derive from disagreements that arise from religious and cultural diversity. While a number of different justifications can be offered for toleration, the value of freedom is one of the most significant. This chapter focuses on the specific conception of freedom as non-domination, rather than on other conceptions such as non-interference or autonomy, and seeks to examine what light can be thrown by this conception on the way in which contemporary states should deal with issues arising from religious and cultural diversity. It considers whether there is a place for toleration in the strict sense of ‘allowing something with which one disagrees’, which has been criticized as paradoxical, out-moded and dominating. It argues that freedom as non-domination grounds a conception of secure toleration that avoids these criticisms, while requiring some elements that are normally associated with respect and recognition.

Limiting the Transmission of Family Advantage: Ius Sanguinis with an Expiration Date

Citizenship is needed from birth, and ius sanguinis citizenship, rather than merely extending unjustified privilege, allows children to live and move with their parents; their continuing citizenship as adults, however, could be made conditional on some period of residence.