Admission to Citizenship Author(s): Herman R. Van Gunsteren Source: Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Jul., 1988), pp.

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Admission to Citizenship Herman R. van Gunsteren

Our social interaction consists very much in telling one another what right thinking is and passing blame on wrong thinking. This is indeed how we build the institutions, squeezing each other's ideas into a common shape so that we can prove rightness by sheer numbers of independent assent. So much is this claim to intellectual independence recognized as a basis of our social life that moral philosophy takes its stand at that very point. This is why Durkheim's idea that the social group acts like one mind is so repugnant. GLOBAL JUSTICE AND LOCAL CITIZENSHIP In order to be a person one needs a home base: a culture, an oikos (socioeconomic security), citizenship (political and legal standing). Human rights are important but in themselves are insufficient as a basis for personhood in the present world. Human rights need institutional backing in order to be effective. Prominent among these is citizenship. Citizenship is an institutional status from within which a person can address governments and other citizens and make claims about human rights. Schemes to provide citizen status for every human being in the world have not been convincing. Efforts to develop a world citizenship have foundered on the necessarily local character of citizenship. Citizenship, as we have known it up till now, is time, place, and cultural bound. It is a scarce resource that can remain a resource only as long as certain boundaries are maintained. The price for effective standing and equality among citizens apparently is inequality between citizens and noncitizens, between insiders and outsiders. When applied at the world level, citizenship loses its point or cutting edge. Efforts to develop and practice global schemes for ajust distribution of local citizenship so that no human being will be without it have not been convincing either. As Walzer concludes in his attempt to develop such a scheme, "The principle of mutual aid can only modify and not

1. Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), p. 91. Ethics 98 (July 1988): 731-741 3 1988 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/88/9804-0009$01.00

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transform admissions policies rooted in a particular community's understanding of itself."2 Simply accepting differential treatment of local citizens and noncitizens will not do, however. It is too often morally unacceptable in cases involving guest workers, stateless persons, and refugees from tyrannical regimes (these states violate citizenship and human rights requirements to such a degree that their 'citizens' are de facto not better off than stateless persons). What to do then? I propose to steer a middle course between ineffectual globalism and immoral localism. The global perspective is to be used not as a blueprint but as a corrective to localism. The way to work toward globalism is to work with local pieces. The local citizen perspective should not be suppressed or merely accepted as a regrettable remnant of irrational loyalties, but it should rather be used as an indispensable basis for personhood. It is to be improved on the basis of both global criticism and local experience and constraints. In what follows I shall look at the question of admission to citizenship from a local perspective. I address this question from within a particular conception of citizenship. In this, I differ from a theorist like Walzer who tries to develop a global perspective and brings in local considerations only as a second best after he has demonstrated that a global perspective gives too little guidance and that practical admissions policies are dominated by local considerations anyway. My primary interest is in developing a robust and defensible local Dutch liberal democratic conception of citizenship and then to inquire what guidance it gives on the nasty problems of admission of those who wish to acquire it. CITIZENSHIP What is a citizen? Citizenship is an answer to the question, "Who am I?" and "What should I do?" when posed in the public sphere. Citizens have autonomy and judgment. Autonomy is not the same as having no ties, as being dependent on nothing and no one except oneself; exercising judgment is not the same as stating one's subjective and arbitrary opinion. Citizenship is more than a status; it is an office. It implies acting, doing something, bringing something about. Autonomy andjudgment are both conditions for and intended outcomes of citizen action. A citizen is he who has those two qualities to such a degree that he is and remains capable of both ruling and being ruled. The conditions for citizenship that have been developed in liberal democracies are political participation, judgment by one's peers (citizen judges), socioeconomic security, freedom of organization (time, money, expertise), and knowledge (communicative competence, culture, infor2. Michael Walzer, SpheresofJustice (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983), p. 51. See also Bruce Ackerman, SocialJusticein the LiberalState (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 257.

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mation). The outcome of citizen action is checked or controlled by continuing public debate between citizens, by protection of fundamental human rights, and by the judgment of independent courts of law. This sounds like ideology, like an ideal without much practical significance. Isn't the individual, who is supposed to be free and capable of judgment, what he is precisely through the fact that he is part of larger, supraindividual entities? In ordinary language, 'citizen' is a residual concept used to refer to powerless members of the political community. The others derive power and influence from what distinguishes them from ordinary citizens. Citizenship is a rather bleak and lifeless idea, as we know from survey research, depth interviews, tax fraud and evasion, and distaste for military service (older generations have fought for the citizen's right to bear arms). At the same time citizenship is coveted and valued by outsiders (e.g., those who want asylum). Why is it that such a central political concept does not arouse strong feelings and well-elaborated ideas? Because of insiders, citizenship is a matter of fact, something that is self-evidently taken for granted. It only becomes visible at its boundaries or in cases of disasters, such as Nazi occupation. Internally, citizenship has no distinctive power. Everyone around you has it, and therefore it can provide you with neither power nor identity. It is always difficult to see and understand the ways in which things taken for granted are reproduced. Also a gradual increase of hesitations and interruptions of such reproduction processes are often not perceived, at least not before they have increased beyond repair. The societal reproduction of matters self-evidently taken for granted often becomes visible only when they have ceased to be self-evident. The dangers that this blind spot poses are increased because the classical theory of citizenship, as outlined above, has a number of notorious shortcomings. On the basis of modern insights three of these can be remedied or circumvented: the relation between individuals and supraindividual entities, the gap between ideal and reality, and the arbitrariness of citizen judgments. I shall briefly indicate how. INDIVIDUALS AND OTHER ACTORS How individuals connect and depend on other associations, or the relations between parts and wholes, has remained problematic for the social sciences because of a recurrent failure to develop an adequate theory of action. Within a sociologistic approach there remains no place for action (action is explained away, as it were, and renamed role or other behavior), while in rational choice theory there are no historically embodied actors (the choosing actor is an abstraction; how he acquires his values and truthshow he critically checks and resets and thereby his preferences-and them remains in the dark; preferences are either postulated or simply accepted in one of the guises in which they reveal themselves). Recent theorizing by Rom Harre, Mary Douglas, Anthony Giddens, and others has broken out of this impasse. Giddens, for instance, using an avalanche

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of concepts and words, develops a theory of double structuration.3 Individuals are both product and producers of social relations of which they form parts. Actorship is an emergent property of social relations, not a quality that every human being has by nature. Acting is "bricolage," working with pieces of "material"that are historically and socially available. The traditional question whether a citizen is or is not a basic/founding element of the polity can be better answered now. Earlier thinkerspolitical atomists-conceived of separate bodies as separate individuals, as persons who could, if they wished to do so, freely transform themselves into citizens and a political community. Later thinkers criticized this vision. The choosing self, they argued, was a myth, a product of passing historical patterns of interaction and conceptions of the self. The end of the socalled era of the individual, of humanistic thinking, would be near. Giddens and others propose a middle position. The self/citizen is indeed historically and socially produced; once having been produced it becomes a relatively independent source of transformation of social relations that generated it in the first place; independence of the citizen becomes, moreover, a criterion for resetting and reordering such relations; often there is no way back, in the sense that modern complex social relations, systems, and levels of provision cannot continue to function without citizen independence (autonomy and judgment). ARISTOTELIAN VERSUS KANTIAN CITIZENSHIP The perspective developed here makes the gap between the theory and the practice of citizenship less forbidding and barren. In the debate between Socrates and Thrasymachus about justice4 and in Kant's considerations of political expediency,5 we find a strict separation between idea (ideal, normative conception) and practice. If practice does not fit the idea, so much the worse for practice. This position provides so little hold for people who have to act in practice that they reject the ideas as useless and improvise their own solutions. Why not abandon the scheme of, on the one hand, b.zasic,rational, and immutable ideals and, on the other, a given empirical reality? Neither ideals nor reality are simply given in this way. Ideais have been historically produced. For many ideals, the historical reality in which they emerged is an essential condition for their meaningful pursuit. This holds for the ideal of the Enlightenment, which presupposes the existence of traditions against which to fight. This holds also for the ideal of an absolutely free individual, who is determined by nothing external to his free will.6 Ideals and ideas should be seen in
3. Anthony Giddens, CentralProblemsin Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradictions in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979). 4. Plato, Republic, bk. 1. 5. For example, Immanuel Kant, "Uber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richting sein, taugt aber nicht fur die Praxis," lecture given in 1793. 6. Such an individual is nothing; see Michael J. Sandel, Liberalismand the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

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their specific relation to a specific historical reality. In particular, one needs to inquire in which historical institutions they have become embodied. Following this approach we end up with an Aristotelian, and not a Kantian, notion of citizenship. Thus a conception of citizenship is inherently related to a specific historical community, including its institutionally embodied aspirations and possibilities for criticizing the community and its institutions. Striving for the realization of citizenship, then, is striving for the best that is possible in the given circumstances. Citizenship is in the making, not a safe possession of empiricists or normative theorists. JUDGMENT A third weakness of the classical theory of citizenship lies in its lack of attention to and analysis ofjudgment. Citizenjudgments were considered to be subjective and therefore immune to scientific or rational criticism. Until recently, citizen theorists were ruled by the unfruitful dichotomy of the 'rational' and 'empirical' knowledge of scientific and other experts on the one hand, and the nonrational individual preferences and ideologies of 'free' citizens on the other. Presently we are witnessing, fortunately, a revival of interest in judgment, as for example in the work of Gadamer, Habermas, and Beiner. We exercise judgment, they say, in those situations that require a decision, but for which there is not a decisive 'automatic' formula, and which nevertheless contain elements that cannot be made immune to criticism by labeling them as 'subjective.' Debate and criticism concerning judgment rely on topoi (noncontroversial common starting points of reasoning) and rhetoric. This is the realm of debate and criticism situated between 'friends,' cocitizens. One is expected to understand and acknowledge their positions because of a shared history and present for action situation. One is held responsible for one's judgment-and based thereupon-by one's equals; that is, by citizens. In sum, from the fact that judgment is not objective, it does not follow that judgment cannot be argued about and that it is irremediably subjective. The renewed interest in judgment makes a more balanced approach to both components of citizenship-autonomy and judgmentpossible. Exclusive attention to autonomy is not sufficient. In order to decide if and to what extent someone is autonomous we have to ascertain if and to what extent he is capable of sound judgment. On the basis of the foregoing we can review and repair the traditional notion of citizenship a little. Citizenship is an office in a historical community. There are specific requirements for admission to, removal from, and continuation in this office. The office itself can only be reproduced by its actual exercise. In a republic, citizenship is the primary office. It is at stake in all public action. Civil servants and politicians do not cease to be ordinary citizens when they hold office. All public action can be judged in terms of its consequences for citizenship (just as it can be judged in terms of its consequences for justice, the budget deficit, etc.). A republic is a polity that is ruled and inhabited by citizens. A republic

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can be conceived as a program for the reproductionn of citizens. A republic may act only insofar as this is necessary for the design and implementation of such a program. ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS What guidance does this revised conception of citizenship give in matters of admission? An admission decision should be judged in terms of its consequences for citizenship. Does it improve the quality of citizenship, does it enlarge the set of people who are admitted to citizenship, does citizenship remain a realistic option for future generations? Answers to these questions cannot be given here because they depend on judgment in specific historical situations for which no general formulas or laws can be decisive. What can be indicated here, however, is the direction in which answers may be found and the legitimacy (from the point of view of citizenship) of various constraints that such answers are supposed to satisfy. Posing admission requirements is not in principle illegitimate. Only people who have certain capabilities can act as citizens. Requirements for admission that follow from the conception of citizenship outlined above are (a) general citizen competence, (b) competence to act as a member of this particular polity, and (c) access to an oikos. Requirementa.-The prospective citizen must be capable of dialogic performance. He must, within limits, be ready to argue with other citizens, to talk and listen to them, and to form his judgment on the basis of such dialogue. He must, also within limits, be able and willing to make his actions conform to his talk. Requirementb. -The prospective citizen must be capable and willing to be a member of this particular historical community, its past and future, its forms of life and institutions within which its members think and act. In a community that values autonomy and judgment of its members, this is obviously not a requirement of pure conformity. But it is a requirement of knowledge of the language and the culture and of acknowledgment of those institutions that foster the reproduction of citizens who are capable of autonomous and responsible judgment. What this comes down to in Dutch admission practice is that prospective citizens are required to know the Dutch language and to respect the laws of the land (this is shown by their not having committed major criminal offenses during their stay in the country). Requirementc.-In order not to be forced to sell themselves or their autonomous judgment into dependence, the prospective citizens should have a reasonably secure access to the means of their continued existence. They must own property or have access to another source of income, for example, from ajob, social security, or the welfare state. The prospective citizen may, on various grounds, have secure and legitimate income claims on the state that he wants to become a citizen of. But of course his applying for citizenship can in itself not create or reinforce such claims.

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These three requirements of (a) dialogue and judgment, (b) culture and identity, and (c) means of life and autonomy are implicit in the conception of citizenship outlined above. These are not minor claims. Can one ask that much from newcomers? Yes, if one does not apply the requirements too rigorously. All one may ask for is clear intentional and behavioral indications that the prospective citizen will "grow into" these requirements in due time. That is, that such a growth process is clearly under way. Another objection to these requirements, often voiced in Dutch parliamentary debates, is that they violate equality because they demand more from newcomers than is expected from quite a number of native citizens. The objection is mistaken on two counts. What is at issue in the first place is precisely whether newcomers will acquire the right to equal treatment with Dutch citizens. Therefore a simple appeal to the principle of equal treatment will not do. More argument is needed. In the second place, the objection implicitly assumes that criteria for expulsion from citizenship are the same as those for admission. Quod non. In practice, and in most theories as well, these criteria differ. I would argue, with Hannah Arendt, that expulsion from citizenship against one's will is never permitted. Although these are stiff requirements, they leave ample room for political discretionary judgment. Too much room, according to Walzer. He maintains that "naturalization . . . is entirely constrained: every new immigrant, every refugee taken in, every resident and worker must be offered the opportunities of citizenship."7 If naturalization involves discretion, then, the citizens who decide about admission exercise tyranny over "metics," over resident aliens who live among them but have no legally guaranteed access to citizenship. Walzer wants internal policy choice, or discretion, to be exercised exclusively at the moment of entry onto the territory. This is highly impractical. Entry decisions must often be made quickly and on the basis of insufficient information. Walzer does not seem to be the kind of person who will say "When in doubt, keep out." Thus many will be admitted who do not fulfill the requirements of citizenship. Isn't it wiser to allow for a transition period during which applicant and receiving polity can learn more about each other by trial and error, and only then make decisions about citizenship? Although Walzer's proposal is not a good one, his argument that no democratic polity can allow a distinction between citizens and metics, between firstclass and second-class citizens, merits serious attention. Further on I shall argue that the position of metic is only acceptable when its duration is limited. In contradiction to Walzer, Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith claim that the decision to naturalize should be entirely political and discretionary.8
7. Walzer, p. 62. withoutConsent: 8. Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith, Citizenship Illegal Aliensin theAmerican Polity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).

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Citizenship, in their view, should be entirely based on mutual consent. They forget that one needs standing (status) in order to give or refuse any consent whatsoever and that consent is constrained by identity on both sides. In my view the naturalization decision is partly constrained, partly judgmental and discretionary. Others agree, but present different requirements (constraints) than the ones developed above. In Ackerman's liberal theory, for instance, mutual intelligibility is the only requirement for admission. He would reject requirement b. But doesn't he forget that "the liberal vision is parasitic on a notion of community it officially rejects?"9 What about the well-known ascriptive criteria for granting citizenship, such as having been born on the territory or from a citizen-parent, or having lived on the territory for a considerable time? In principle these criteria constitute no more than prima facie evidence that one or more of the three requirements developed above have been met. But those ascriptive criteria play a more important role in exceptional cases, to which I now turn. ADMITTING APPLICANTS THAT DO NOT FULFILL ALL THE REQUIREMENTS What is to be done with applicants for citizenship who do not fulfill all the requirements for admission, but who are-de facto or de jurestateless persons? I find arguments for admitting them compelling. Compare reasons for excluding the death penalty: 'we' would deny our identity, that is, who we are and what we hold human beings to be, if we were to administer such a penalty. A similar argument can be made about stateless persons regarding expulsion from or nonadmission to the territory. If you keep them on the territory, you will eventually have to grant them citizenship, because a prolonged existence as resident aliens in a society of citizens is unacceptable from the point of view of citizenship developed above. It would violate equality between members of the community by allowing second-class citizenship for some members to be a permanent or terminal station in their lives. Second-class citizenship is not only a danger for stateless persons and refugees who have been admitted onto the territory but also for guest workers. Many regulations and practices are designed to keep them out, to make their stay temporary only, and to prevent them from acquiring an oikosin the country where they presently work as 'guests.'10 From the point of view of citizenship, such second-class citizens, such hybrids that are part citizen, part stranger, are monstrosities. Monsters, as we know, should be eliminated or, if we cannot do this, should receive at least special treatment and be kept in special and guarded places.
9. Michael Sandel, "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," Political Theory 12 (February 1984): 91. 10. See, for Austria, Rainer Baubock, "Auslanderarmut," Osterreichische Zeitschriftfiir Politikwissenschaft (1986), pp. 403-23.

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Thus it is understandable that people committed to equal citizenship on the territory have developed arguments and policies designed to keep this in-between category of half-citizens as small as possible. Recent policies toward guest workers in Holland try to present them with a reasonable and clear-cut opportunity for choice between integration and re-migration. Schuck and Smith argue for a more inclusive and generous naturalization policy and a stricter policy of admission to and expulsion from the territory. 11 An increasing emphasis on strict policies of admission to and expulsion from the territory is currently prominent in most West European countries. The ingredients of this policy are quick decision making, no economic refugees, and international coordination. Quick decision making is thought necessary in order to avoid de facto settlement and acquisition of an oikos on the territory. Economic refugees should not take the places that were intended for 'real' political refugees. International coordination is needed to avoid overflooding of some countries that are thought to be overly generous (they should be brought in line), to achieve a reasonable distribution of refugees over West European countries, and to repair 'leaks' in the system (for instance, as in East Berlin or Amsterdam). Such a policy meets with considerable difficulties. Quick decision making on matters of such importance is callousness when information is scarce and unreliable, when language and cultural barriers are considerable, and when there is no reasonable period during which the partners involved can try each other out. What is the difference between economic and political refugees? Politics and economics, as we know, hang together. The only sure proof of being a political refugee seems to be that one should have died but was saved by an inexplicable miracle. International coordination is a shadowy affair. Conferences between government ministers and civil servants are not public. Only select results are publicly announced. Impression management about the 'openness' of various Western European countries or about a fragile unitary Western European admissions policy is a difficult affair, particularly if one wants to impress persons in faraway countries who are involved in a domestic struggle for life. On her return from a visit to her Italian colleague, the Dutch undersecretary ofjustice, arriving at the Amsterdam airport, recently announced an important policy change: to refuse entry and a regular asylum procedure to refugees who could have asked for asylum in another country. Such violation of the rules of due process is a heavy price to pay for international coordination. Efforts to keep the category of half-citizens thinly populated have odd consequences. Dutch citizens are not obliged to carry or show an identity card (resistance to such an obligation dates from the Second World War). Foreigners are obliged to identify themselves. Thus, in order to prove that they are not obliged to identify themselves, Dutch citizens
11. Schuck and Smith.

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are obliged to identify themselves as Dutch citizens. Finally, the strict policy of admission to the territory in no way solves the problem of illegal aliens and their children who live and are sometimes born on the territory. Their numbers are probably increased as a result of a stricter territorial admissions policy, and their claims for naturalization lose none of their force because of it. Second-class citizenship cannot be entirely avoided. It is an articulation of social and economic relations. Instead of trying to do away with it altogether, it seems wiser to accept it as a transitory status that is regulated by rules of law and as a tryout period after which naturalization is not an automatic result. If we make the territorial admission decision final, admission becomes in fact a lottery. I conclude that the conception of citizenship developed above cannot adequately deal with the realities of second-class citizenship. It invites decision-making schemes for admission that are impractical and unjust in their outcomes. EXCLUSION OF APPLICANTS WHO FULFILL THE REQUIREMENTS The problem here is one of numbers. Admitting all those applicants who fulfill the requirements would endanger the continued reproduction of citizenship for those who are already in. For instance, this could make demands on welfare state provisions for citizens too heavy (the total pie is too small to give each the piece that he has a right to as a citizen) or threaten cultural cohesion and historical identity. It is not difficult to imagine that there are such limits, but it is very difficult to know where they are exactly or even roughly located. Many people fear that one does not even know when one is entering dangerous territory near these borders and that one can know where they are located only after one has unknowingly broken through them and no return is possible. Thus, in practice, citizenship in a number of countries is a scarce resource, and supply outstrips demand. To settle this by price information is not an acceptable practice, except perhaps in Switzerland and on the black market for migration. Allowing citizenship to be a buyable commodity runs counter to the very idea of citizenship. Citizenship is not for sale and is precisely intended to prevent people from having to sell themselves or their votes. But what are we to do about numbers, about eligible applicants that cannot all be admitted? What guidance can the conception of citizenship give here? Can it help set priorities? If a republic is conceived as a program for reproducingg citizens, one can compare costs and benefits of admitting one or another applicant in this program. Better two cheap new citizens than one expensive one. I hesitate to write this unpalatable formula down, but do so because it seems less bad than alternatives like a lottery or bribery. Thus, proximity to local citizenship, both physical and cultural, would count in an applicant's favor. The same holds for having an oikos, a

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means of existence. But this is unacceptable. Setting priorities in terms of proximity to local citizenship thus in fact means changing admission requirements altogether and giving priority to the well-bred and wealthy applicants, priorities that the very conception of modern citizenship in the welfare state was intended to do away with. I conclude that in the question of numbers, this conception can give no guidance, except in a negative way by excluding certain priorities. What about the 'need' of the applicant as a criterion? From the point of view of citizenship this has no relevance except in an indirect way. One can argue that the local conception of citizenship is an embodiment of human rights aspirations and that therefore those whose need consists in adequate human rights protection should be let in first. CONCLUSION A local conception of citizenship as developed above provides guidance for deciding about the global distribution of local citizenships among human beings. Or more precisely, it is practicallyavailable and not evidently useless or unjust in its outcomes. It allows for and incorporates aspirations for human rights for all and developments toward international cooperation. The local conception and institutions of liberal democratic citizenship do not sharply conflict with universal convictions and insights about justice. It seems rather a useful vehicle for the practical realization of these. On the other hand, I must also conclude that local citizenship as outlined here may be useful, but it is certainly not enough. It cannot adequately deal with the realities of second-class citizenship and great numbers of eligible applicants. POSTSCRIPT There is another division between classes of citizens that is becoming more prominent and that constitutes in a sense a real development of world citizenship. We witness the emergence of an international businessclass citizenship that is multilingual, multicultural, and migrant. Early examples of its members are Nazi rocket and nuclear scientists and other 'indispensable' people. Directing elites of modern societies "study at Harvard, work on the airplane or with international data banks, spend their vacations in Morocco or the Seychelles. The national passport has changed its meaning. Except for the United States, of course, it no longer indicates that one belongs to an autonomous power, but is simply one condition of having access to the 'cosmopolis' of modern communications and modern financial (and technological, e.g.) transfers."12 This new reality requires new struggles to realize equality between citizens but in no way diminishes the importance of problems of admission to traditional local citizenship that are the subject of this paper.
12. Etienne Balibar, "Propositions sur la citoyennet6" (mimeograph), p. 8, also in this issue in translation.