## **CHANGING BORDERS AND CHALLENGING BELONGING**

Both the Brexit process and the Covid pandemic have challenged the idealistic concept that borders in Europe and elsewhere were becoming ever more permeable. The idea that the world was becoming a global village has been seriously eroded. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has once again highlighted how power politics draws borders and shapes belongings. This has necessitated analyses of the nature of human-made borders and boundaries and the consequences for individuals and collectives who experience inclusion or exclusion on their feelings of belonging and their identities. Similarly, governmental policies within states have created majorities and minorities and have caused grave implications for those groups

This multidisciplinary volume comprises essays from researchers and academics, located in Europe and beyond, who investigate the effects of border creation, social and legal inclusivity and exclusion on individuals and collective identities in the past and today. Combining 'from above' and 'from below' perspectives, the volume explores macro-political processes affecting borders and senses of belonging as well as their intersections at the microlevel,

Georg Grote is a historian and Senior Researcher in the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research in Bozen/Bolzano (South Tyrol – Italy). He holds a PhD in History from Westfälische Wilhelms University, Münster, Germany. He works on minority histories in nationalist and regionalist contexts in Europe and has recently published a three-volume history of the South Tyrol issue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, based on regional private archives. He

Andrea Carlà is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research in Bozen/Bolzano (South Tyrol – Italy). He holds a PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. His research explores the interplay among ethnic politics/minority protection, migration studies and security issues, focusing in particular on the concepts of (de)securitization and human security and their application to minority issues. He is the co-editor of *Migration in Autonomous Territories: The Case of South Tyrol and*

**Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà (eds)**

**CHANGING BORDERS AND CHALLENGING BELONGING**

9781800796645\_cvr\_eu.indd All Pages 23-Dec-23 18:18:15

9<PHONE_NUMBER>45

ISBN 978-1-80079-664-5

including private views and individual responses to such types of processes.

at the receiving end of legislation and state actions.

previously taught in the National University of Ireland.

*Catalonia* (2015).

www.peterlang.com

Policy Change and Private Experience

**Edited by Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà** Both the Brexit process and the Covid pandemic have challenged the idealistic concept that borders in Europe and elsewhere were becoming ever more permeable. The idea that the world was becoming a global village has been seriously eroded. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has once again highlighted how power politics draws borders and shapes belongings. This has necessitated analyses of the nature of human-made borders and boundaries and the consequences for individuals and collectives who experience inclusion or exclusion on their feelings of belonging and their identities. Similarly, governmental policies within states have created majorities and minorities and have caused grave implications for those groups at the receiving end of legislation and state actions.

This multidisciplinary volume comprises essays from researchers and academics, located in Europe and beyond, who investigate the effects of border creation, social and legal inclusivity and exclusion on individuals and collective identities in the past and today. Combining 'from above' and 'from below' perspectives, the volume explores macro-political processes affecting borders and senses of belonging as well as their intersections at the microlevel, including private views and individual responses to such types of processes.

Georg Grote is a historian and Senior Researcher in the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research in Bozen/Bolzano (South Tyrol – Italy). He holds a PhD in History from Westfälische Wilhelms University, Münster, Germany. He works on minority histories in nationalist and regionalist contexts in Europe and has recently published a three-volume history of the South Tyrol issue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, based on regional private archives. He previously taught in the National University of Ireland.

**Edited by**

Policy Change and Private Experience

**CHALLENGING BELONGING**

**CHANGING BORDERS AND**

**Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà**

**Peter Lang**

Andrea Carlà is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research in Bozen/Bolzano (South Tyrol – Italy). He holds a PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. His research explores the interplay among ethnic politics/minority protection, migration studies and security issues, focusing in particular on the concepts of (de)securitization and human security and their application to minority issues. He is the co-editor of *Migration in Autonomous Territories: The Case of South Tyrol and Catalonia* (2015).

**Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà (eds)**

**CHANGING BORDERS AND CHALLENGING BELONGING**

9781800796645\_cvr\_eu.indd All Pages 23-Dec-23 18:18:15

'This timely and important book provides a critical look at borders and belonging. It illuminates the tensions and contradictions that often exist within the logic of legal and political mechanisms that define regional and national boundaries and the reality of the lives lived within these constructions. The resulting essays are instructive, thought-provoking and sometimes very moving explorations of the making and meaning of historical and contemporary borderlands.'

> – Roisín Higgins, Professor of History, National University of Ireland Maynooth

'This volume is a masterful combination of analyses of feelings of belonging and identities following from changing state and cultural borders in the past and present and their challenges for living together. Its chapters analyse the intersections of people, territory, institutions and law from theoretical perspectives as well as through reflexive individual experience of social identity formation from below, often with a focus on their contestation in (re-)territorialized sub-state regions.'

– Josef Marko, Professor of Comparative Public Law and Political Sciences, University of Graz

Changing Borders and Challenging Belonging

# Changing Borders and Challenging Belonging

Policy Change and Private Experience

Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà (eds)

PETER LANG Oxford - Berlin - Bruxelles - Chennai - Lausanne - New York Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grote, Georg, 1966- editor. | Carlà, Andrea, 1975- editor. Title: Changing borders and challenging belonging : policy change and private experience / [edited by] Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà. Description: New York : Peter Lang, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN<PHONE_NUMBER> (print) | LCCN<PHONE_NUMBER> (ebook) | ISBN<PHONE_NUMBER>645 (paperback) | ISBN<PHONE_NUMBER>652 (ebook) | ISBN<PHONE_NUMBER>669 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Europe—Boundaries. | Minorities—Government policy—Europe. | Group identity—Europe. | Place attachment—Europe. Classification: LCC D1058 .C495 2024 (print) | LCC D1058 (ebook) | DDC 305.80094—dc23/eng/20230710

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023022286 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023022287

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This is a Gold Open Access title, with funding from EURAC.

Cover image: An original drawing by Ellen Earner. Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISBN 978-1-80079-664-5 (print) ISBN 978-1-80079-665-2 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-80079-666-9 (ePub) DOI 10.3726/b18969

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## Contents

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#### Georg Grote and Andrea Carlà

## Changing Borders and Challenging Belonging: Policy Change and Private Experience

Introduction

The term *Zeitenwende* has, in recent months, once again become a household trope referring to drastic political events which shape a multitude of countries and regions and have repercussions across the globe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers have popularized this concept of disruption and existential angst as well as major political and military upheaval that uproot an entire population and create havoc with the world order – to some extent comparable to 1914, 1939, 2001 and other shocks to the global system. Global political upheavals of this sort always result in human catastrophe – ordinary people trying to cope with the magnitude of disruption and accommodate their lives within the maelstrom of change. In particular – and among the consequences of *Zeitenwenden* – such dramatic events impact borders as well as their definition and affect people's feelings of belonging and identities, posing both threats and/or opportunities for individuals and collectives alike.

Against this background, this volume has a two-fold focus: investigating the repercussions of major political events relating to changing borders and challenging belonging both 'from above' and 'from below'. From above, it explores legal and policy measures, institutional mechanisms and theoretical approaches addressing issues of borders and belonging across the globe following the alterations of legal and cultural frameworks, such as new borders, regime change, (de)colonization and violent upheavals. From below, it explores personal views on and responses to significant changes in addition to repercussions of major political events on private lives and feelings of belonging, principally in border regions and/or colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Across academic disciplines, social research has tended to be divided between research on the macro-level, focusing on large-scale political and social processes and developments, and on micro-level analysis, highlighting smallscale actions and interactions among individuals. This volume bridges this divide, comprising legal analysis, political science research on institutions and political processes as well as theoretical reflections and historical approaches focusing on a history from below and personal responses to changing political landscapes and new boundaries.

Our starting assumption is that both borders and identities are social constructions. Indeed, borders do not exist as they appear on maps. Political borders are not drawn in nature; rather they are 'imagined line(s)',1 created by humans by 'connecting materiality and symbolic meaning'.2 Performative discourses and practices transform geographical elements into borders.3 Thus borders are not fixed and static entities, but they can change, move and be redrawn, gaining and losing importance. Moreover, processes of de- and reterritorialization as well as externalization of borders might be in place. As human artefacts constructed though narratives and practices, political borders have the potential to be sites of contestation, conflicts and tensions. In this context, concepts such as 'borderscape' aim at capturing the politics, fluidity and fluctuation of borders and their surrounding areas,4

4 Chiara Brambilla, 'Il confine come borderscape', *Intrasformazione* 4/2 (2015), 5–9.

while Burridge et al. use the term 'polymorphic borders' to highlight their complexity and intersections with people, law, territory and institutions.5

Although artificially created, borders have real effects and consequences, moulding people's lives, since they are 'a manifestation of power that demarcates and organizes a space and articulates its limits, ordering as well the people that are located within' it.6 In particular, they are markers of belonging that delimit people's identities and define membership in the community, and thereby people's rights and opportunities.7 Usually, the term border is used in relation to borders between states, but different types of borders exist – from political borders delimiting states to administrative borders between regions and provinces or cultural borders, like linguistic and religious ones. We can find such power dynamics and processes of inclusion and exclusion in all types of borders.

Like borders, identities are social constructions, though at times primordial understandings are put forward, where national and ethnic/cultural identities are considered as fixed givens based on affiliations that are ascriptive and difficult to change.8 The so-called instrumentalist approach highlights the strategic manipulation of identities by pointing out that people continually framed and reframed their identities for economic and political benefits. For example, in defining ethnic groups, Robert Bates emphasizes the fact that they 'are organized about a set of common activities', that their members 'share a conviction that they have common interests and common fate' and that they have 'a cultural symbolism expressing their cohesiveness'.9 In his account, ethnic groups and identities are the fruit

of rational efforts to create coalitions in order to secure material benefits created by social economic transformations. Identities are thus situational and 'dynamic;' their politicization is the result of rational decisions, made mostly by strategic political entrepreneurs.10

However, in this instrumentalist view, it is not clear why identities persist and why some identity groups mobilize while others do not. Furthermore, it does not address the contradiction of individuals considered rational calculators, who believe that their identity is a biological given. Addressing these issues, constructivist scholars of identity politics point out that social structures determine which social-cultural divisions become politicized. As pointed out by David Laitin, government activity 'structures opportunities in such a way as to determine the nature of social cleavage'.11 By legitimizing some group identities to the detriment of others and creating common-sense thinking about these collectives, governments forge these identities politically, which, once forged, 'become commonsensically real'.12 Such a constructivist perspective focuses on the source of the institutionalization of identities, emphasizing the importance of the structural context and the state in shaping identities and societal cleavages.

Within the constructivist tradition, this volume recognizes that any groupings of people are communities based on fictitious constructions and narratives. From this perspective, using Anderson's definition, nations are 'imagined communities' resulting from the 'social construction of reality'.13 Similarly, as pointed out by Brubaker, ethnic groups are 'collective cultural representation […] that sustain the vision and division of the social world in racial, ethnic, or national terms'. However, two clarifications are

*State Versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy Dilemmas* (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983), 153.

10 Bates, 'Modernization', 165; see also David Laitin, 'Hegemony and Religious Conflict: British Imperial Control and Political Cleavages in Yorubaland', in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds), *Bringing the State Back In* (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 285–316, 300.

11 Laitin, 'Hegemony', 287.

12 Laitin, 'Hegemony', 308.

13 Benedict Anderson, *Imagined Communities* (London: Verso, 1983).

necessary.14 First, as Joseph Marko clarifies, 'whenever people define this situation as "real" the consequences following from their actions are no less "real" than the "existence" of things'.15 Thus, we cannot supersede the role that identities play in human society. Second, this volume builds on the notion that in processes of identity construction, people are not passive objects of broader social forces and dynamics; rather they are active subjects that interact with the social and institutional structures and negotiate and renegotiate their identities. In this regard, it is necessary to highlight the role that individuals' emotions, such as hatred, fear and resentment, might play in shaping identities.16 Indeed, the concept of emotion can help explain why and how institutionally constructed identities become essentialized and crystallized and then become dominant. Thereby our aim is to combine and bring together top-down structural approaches and bottom-up analysis of personal experiences, with their weight of emotional baggage.

Within this constructivist framework, the volume explores issues surrounding changing boundaries and challenging belonging, addressing the tensions and contestations in the concepts of borders and identities. In this introduction, we start providing some in-depth reflections on the process of regionalization which has taken place within the European Union (EU) in the past decades. In the fallacy of Herderian understanding of nationalism, (state) borders and (national) identities are in symbiosis. However, in reality, the idea of a homogeneous nation-state is a myth. Human society is indeed based on the social facts of diversity and people's multiple identities. Regionalization is used as a tool to go beyond a 'nationcum-state paradigm,' based on the slogan 'one nation, one culture, one

14 Roger Brubaker, *Ethnicity without Groups* (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 79.

state',17 recognizing simultaneously sub-state entities and state borders. In this regard, following a symposium in February 2012 in Bozen where academics investigated the role of borders in modern Europe, the proceedings were published in a volume titled *'Un mondo senza stati è un mondo senza guerre' – Politically Motivated Violence in Regional Contexts*, 18 which dwelled on the somewhat naive notion that a limitless and timeless peace among people can be achieved through the rejection of the notion of statehood and its borders. At the time, the EU as a peace project appeared to many to be too reluctant to give up state boundaries in favour of a stronger role of the Unions' regions which were striving for greater political participation within the conglomerate of European states.

In 1984, historian Hans Mommsen proclaimed 'Die Nation ist tot, es lebe die Region' (The Nation is dead, long live the Region),19 thus summarizing a widely felt notion that the nation, the decisive marker of collective belonging in Europe, had become an outdated model and was going to be replaced by regions, that is, sub-state geographic entities which were not associated with similar historic burdens. In 1998, Michael Keating published a comprehensive analysis of this new European order – *The New Regionalism in Western Europe. Territorial Restructuring and Political Change*20 – which outlined both the major advantages of this regional focus for peacekeeping and the organization of collective identities and its potential threats to the existing order of Europe, the hollowing out of

the competencies of the nation-states through super state European institutions and sub-state regionalization.

Regional reorganization and increased political participation of the regions seemed, at the time, to be a realistic option for the future of the EU; after all, the Union had invited the regions as early as 1980 – in the so-called Madrid Treaty – to embark on cross-border trade and political decision-making, thus following its own principle of subsidiarity. The introduction of the European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) in the new millennium strengthened the role of regions once again, and this at a time when the regions had already taken quite a battering in their political standing within the EU.

Nowhere in Europe and among the European regions has the pacifying and prosperity-creating character of regionalization been more manifest than in South Tyrol, the so-called German-speaking part of Italy. In this province, which had, since its annexation by Italy in 1918, been a troublesome region in Europe for large parts of the twentieth century and a 'messy' borderland and 'zone of confusion', a far-reaching geographical, political and cultural autonomy for the German-speaking population (and a Ladinspeaking minority) and its Italian fellow citizens has been instrumental in creating a prosperous and peaceful area in the north of Italy.21

If the process of regionalization as a path to right historical wrongs and to create peace and stability in a minority conflict scenario needed any successful advocate, it was the case of South Tyrol. After achieving her autonomy in Italy in 1972, the province made full use of any instruments provided by the EU to emancipate from Italy – the one-time colonizer of the area – and, somewhat more surprisingly, also from the old fatherland Austria. South Tyrol, through the process of regionalization, has come as close as possible to the idea of internal self-determination in the era of classic nation-building processes of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century period.22 The autonomy, however, manifests itself within the confines of

21 Kaplan, 'Conflict and Compromise', 46.

22 See the detailed analyses of the South Tyrol issue by Georg Grote, *'I bin a Südtiroler'. Kollektive Identität zwischen Nation und Region im 20. Jahrhundert* (Bozen: Athesia, 2009) and *The South Tyrol Question, 1866–2010. From National Rage to Regional State* (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012).

the Italian state and within a European framework in which state borders are guaranteed by fellow union states. While, at the same time, it has been a clear policy within the EU to reduce the significance of national boundaries both for its citizens and for international decision-making in Brussels.

At the end of the 1990s, the region seemed to be the key to solving most problems of citizens' political participation and the democratic deficits in the EU, which were rooted in the creation of its member states.

Designed to be a manifestation of collective identities on the substate level and thus well-equipped to solve regional trouble spots, created in the process of building the European nation-states, regions proved to be incapable, however, of responding to some of the major challenges of the new millennium. In fact, it was the reaction of the nation-states globally – and superstructures such as the EU – that defined the response to the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001. Equally, regions had neither the tools nor the means to confront the fiscal and banking crisis in the EU from 2007–8 onwards, which required multinational responses.

The so-called migration crisis of 2015 saw regions as onlookers rather than actors, and the powerlessness of some of the UK's constituent territories in light of the 2016 Brexit referendum was yet another brick in the wall highlighting the impotence of regions. A similar situation arose with the Covid-19 pandemic, which was particularly drastic for those regions that had embarked on cross-border co-operation and the founding of crossborder bodies, such as the EGTC comprising Italian South Tyrol, Trentino and Austrian Tyrol. National borders, re-erected to stem the spread of the virus, now prevented free access from one part of the EGTC to the other. The Ukraine war presented its specific challenges, and once again the EU regions were in no position to respond, quite the opposite: the Russian threat made EU regions take shelter behind the boundaries of the EU and its individual building blocks, the nation-states. If anything, rather than regionalization, these dramatic events proved the need in a globalized world for proper coordination among levels of governance, regions, nations, the EU and other supranational institutions.

All of a sudden, the EU's core principle – whereby the EU guaranteed the existence of the national boundaries to all its member states – was no longer seen as a threat to the EU's collective identities, both large and small, but turned into a peace-keeping and peace-protecting means on the European continent, which was experiencing a real and existential threat of a brutal invader from the East. It has, to date, been the EU's strength that it confronts the external military, economic and political pressure created by Russia through its common and united stance and repeated declarations that its boundaries – that is, the individual state borders of its constituents – will be defended. This decisive stance also protects the European regions, and it is closely associated with the EU's most essential quality: the EU is first and foremost a peace project built on the destruction of the Second World War.

Thus, the question may be asked: are we looking at this particular *Zeitenwende* as a revitalizer and a guarantor of the peace-creating and peace-maintaining idea which has been at the core of the EU since its inception in the late 1950s? And are we living in a time where we witness new dynamics changing established borders and challenging belonging?

To explore macro-political processes and their consequences on the micro-level is at the core of this volume. Long before war was hoisted on Ukraine by Russia, we had planned a symposium at Eurac Research in South Tyrol, which, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, had to be first postponed and then abandoned. However, this volume bundles some of the contributions which would have formed the symposium in 2020, in order to make them accessible to a wider academic community.

*Changing Borders and Challenging Belonging* is therefore a multidisciplinary investigation into issues of borders and belonging in general and in particular – both yesterday and today. This volume comprises, therefore, a range of analyses into the creation of borders and identities, both within given territorial entities and between them, and the effects of border creation on ordinary people. We do not understand borders purely in the post-Second World War context but aim beyond the realities of post-war Europe. Thus, *Changing Borders and Challenging Belonging* investigates scenarios prior to 1945 as well. While paying attention to South Tyrol, it also moves its focus to other parts of Europe and the world, from the UK to Australia.

Borders, in this context, can be defined as traditional borders between states, but also the newly erected boundaries within states to include one group and exclude others; they can mean state policy and they can be societal exclusion. We are including internal and external boundaries, physical and psychological demarcations into groups of those who belong and those who are excluded. Yet, whatever the nature of border creation might be, they trigger responses by those affected, which is the other main focus of this volume. Boundary changes have had massive consequences for people everywhere and at any time. It did not need the Ukraine war to demonstrate to us how so-called ordinary people have been affected by administrative changes, by domestic and international power politics and by wars.

The contributions in this volume range from theoretical approaches towards the topic to historical analyses, comprising micro-historical approaches and system analysis, to contemporary scenarios such as Brexit, just shy of the Ukraine war. The volume is organized according to approaches both from above and from below. It starts with analyses from above, presenting theoretical contributions by first jussi p. laine and then roberta medda-windischer and karl kössler. laine provides theoretical insights that touch upon the core topic of the volume, highlighting the continuous misrepresentation of the real volume and value of migration and human mobility and the role of borders in processes of categorization. The author, furthermore, questions a nationalistic understanding of the concept of integration in light of multi-layered aspects of belonging that challenge the boundaries of nations and states. Connected to laine's appeal to turn inclusive egalitarian principles into concrete actions, medda-windischer and kössler challenge the traditional understanding of citizenship, discussing the concept of regional citizenship and residence-based civic citizenship as a tool of social inclusion and participation at the sub-national level. Referring to a variety of examples mostly within the EU, the authors build theoretical arguments in favour of regional/residence-based practices of citizenship.

Moving from theory to empirical case studies, leah simmons wood explores the slogan of taking back control implicit in the Brexit leave campaign, pointing out its fallacies – since the UK has never lost control of its borders within the EU framework – and its links with a nostalgia for the British Empire, where British identity has been built on racial exclusion. UK policies towards migrants and especially asylum seekers expose this desire to reinforce external and internal bordering, which has dramatic humanitarian consequences. andrea carlà switches attention to the role of institutions for divided societies on the relationship between different communities and their identities. Using a securitization framework, the author compares Northern Ireland and South Tyrol, and analyses how their consociational power-sharing system affects the perception of others, fostering inclusive or exclusive understanding of the community.

Both alexandra tomaselli and tobias weger draw attention instead to the impact of the process of state formation. tomaselli highlights its consequences for the Sámi people in Northern Europe and Russia, focusing and comparing the limited political powers of Sámi communities across countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland and to a lesser extent Russian Federation), as well as issues of discrimination and cross-border co-operation. Her analysis reveals a persistent colonial structure vis-à-vis Indigenous Peoples. Bridging from-above and from-below approaches, weger looks at the case of the contested border area of Dobrudja, divided between Romania and Bulgaria. Adopting a top-down perspective, the author traces the reconfiguration of state borders and state policies affecting the region and its diverse communities since 1878 to today, while exploring with a bottom-up approach the everyday pragmatic choices made by Dobrudja's inhabitants to face these political changes.

The remaining contributors apply the view from the bottom up as they investigate how government policies, national ideologies and state persecution affected individuals and groups inside and outside the defined frameworks. enikő dácz discusses the autobiographical challenges of the ideological turbulences associated with the Second World War faced by three South-Eastern European writers, and particularly how they reworked their autobiographical narratives in an effort to come to terms with their own experiences and contacts with dictatorial regimes in the war period, while winfried r. garscha outlines the devastating effects of the National Socialist racial ideology on a young liberal Jewish woman, who, originating from a modern liberal identity perspective, got trapped in the binary Jewish/non-Jewish scenario created by the Nazis and who eventually falls victim to this pseudo-ideology.

katie holmes focuses on a different aspect of policy enforcement in the Australian context, the ill-fated settlement scheme of war veterans and their individual plight in the Australian outback. This example demonstrates that a policy which originated in the idea that the state would create a kind of welfare system for its veteran soldiers while, at the same time, continue to colonize the Australian continent could nevertheless have severe consequences on these individuals due to the shortcomings of the plan.

Finally, both markus wurzer and georg grote focus on the central Alpine area. wurzer's contribution highlights the involvement of local German-speaking South Tyrolean soldiers in Italian colonial warfare – representatives of a recently colonized people in the north of Italy who now gained the opportunity to join the Italian army on its occupation of Abyssinia and who fell very much in line with the colonial narrative of Italy. grote's chapter is on the devastating impact of the Hitler-Mussolini agreement of 1939 on the identity of one South Tyrolean family. He demonstrates how the two dictators' dictum – if you cannot change the landscape you may exchange the populations – threw the relationship between five siblings into turmoil and how they tortured themselves and each other over the question to stay or to go in the run-up to the deadline of December 1939.

#### Jussi P. Laine

## On Unbounded Belongingness: An Exploration into Reconfiguring Borders beyond Dualisms and Detachment

## Introduction

This chapter advances the notion that people are not from a particular place. It argues that the politics of belonging cannot be reduced to a geographically placed and bounded community. Social, political and territorial demarcations persist, largely because of the collective reproduction of their underlying essentialist conception and logic, yet belonging and the conception of home are increasingly formed in relationship to movement. In a world increasingly on the move, it is necessary to acknowledge the multi-layered aspects of belonging that often straddle the boundaries of a state and nation. This necessitates a transition from the confines of methodological nationalism, social naturalization and political fixations to the empowering acts of belonging. Such a move also enables an integration of spatial socialization amid the multiplicity and situatedness of individual attachments, participation and the need for representation.

The chapter begins with a brief description of the recent migration patterns to demonstrate that migration continues to be largely misconstrued and misrepresented: it is often exaggerated yet it is less expectational than is often claimed. Migration – and its commonplace associated fears – has become effectively politicized. Such politicized migration is a global phenomenon but has been especially evident in the case of Europe.1 The chapter elaborates on the role of borders in constructing and reconfirming the category of 'international migrant' in explaining how territorial statecentric imaginaries foster exclusionary policies, whereby the policies of nation-states often result in migration and harm. It thus seeks to contribute to and provide further grounds for the premise already stated in this volume's introduction that both borders and identities are social constructions rather than fixed, permanent and axiomatic lines of division. As human artefacts constructed through narratives, practices and performances, political borders can be conceptualized sites of both encounter and contestation,2 open to some, yet closed to others.3

Before concluding with discussions of belonging in a globalized world, the chapter offers critical remarks on the normative aspects of integration.4 Used as a yardstick, integration continues to be assessed predominantly with quantitative measures of migrants' socioeconomic performance, commonly in contrast with the 'non-migrant' 'native' population. Less attention is paid to who and what constitute the host population and society to

which a migrant is expected to aspire. Instead of continuing to fine-tune the analytical approach or fashioning yet another conceptualization of integration, this chapter claims that the entire premise from which the key postulation guiding our thinking stems needs to be re-evaluated. In an increasingly mobile world, it is necessary to acknowledge the multilayered aspects of belonging, which often straddle the boundaries of nation and state. This chapter argues that a new understanding of being local, of belonging, should be sought through processes of inclusion and mutual recognition. These require continuous negotiation, but they fuel a social innovation in which the focus can be shifted from integration and assimilation to the co-creation of new transcultural spaces through embedding and of emplacement to allow everyone to feel at home.

## Misleading migration patterns

The governance of human mobility can undoubtedly be seen as the most important challenge of the twenty-first century.5 The challenge is not alleviated by the observation that much migration governance occurs in the shadow of an uncertainty in which facts, values and beliefs blur.6 Rational assessments tend to be overshadowed by emotional outbursts, shortsighted stances and crisis-oriented framings. These not only obscure the matter at hand but also diminish the potential to understand and thus seek to properly address the challenge. Migration has become a field in which estimations often outweigh researched actualities, and hearsay

5 Achille Mbembe, 'Thoughts on the Planetary: An Interview with Achille Mbembe', *New Frame* (5 September 2019), 16.

6 Andrew Geddes, *Governing Migration beyond the State: Europe, North America, South America, and Southeast Asia in a Global Context* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 1.

and myths govern concrete evidence.7 While facts no longer seem to matter,8 they certainly exist.

International migrants currently comprise 3.6% of the global population.9 It is indisputable that the estimated overall number of international migrants has increased in recent decades: up from 2.4% in 1960 to 2.8% in 2000 (Figure 1). However, the growth is only moderate. In actual numbers, the global migrant stock has almost quadrupled from 71.8 million in 1960 to 281 million in 2020. Nevertheless, these numbers must be understood in relation to the rapid overall growth of the human population (from 3.0 billion in 1960 to 7.8 billion in 2020). The figure of 281 million includes those who migrated from one country to live in another; many more, of course, moved within their countries of origin, migrating from villages and towns and from towns to cities.10 Yet it is more astonishing when the same *international* migration statistics are flipped: the vast majority of people (96.4%) continue to live in the country in which they were born. The volume of human mobility tends to be exaggerated for certain, often political, purposes. Around the world, migration continues to be the exception rather than the rule.

Nations Population Division.

The share of migrants in the European Union (EU) (people living in a country other than that in which they were born) has climbed from 2.8% in 1960 to 12.2% in 2020. Yet, a large proportion of this can be explained by increased intraregional mobility, which for decades now has constituted one of the cornerstones of the European integration process. According to Eurostat and United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) data, 5.1% (23 million people) of the 447.3 million people living in the EU were non-EU citizens in 2020, and almost 8.3% (37 million people) of all EU inhabitants were born outside the EU. There are considerable differences between the different member states, yet in all of them, the shares are remarkably lower than in most high-income countries. Ten years earlier, the share of third-country nationals (TCNs) in the EU was 4.6% (20.2 million people). The growth here can be considered quite modest – perhaps even too modest – as the immigration rate is no longer sufficient to balance out the negative natural population demographic inflicted by low birth rates and an ageing population (Figure 2). The natural change in the EU population remained positive – albeit decreasing – until 2011 but has been negative

Figure 2. Population change by component (annual crude rates), EU, 1960–20. Source: Eurostat (DEMO\_GIND, 2021).

ever since (Figure 2). The total change remained positive due to net migration until 2020 when this number also became negative due to the reduced immigration resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. In the EU, migration inflows declined in 2020 compared to 2019. Whereas in 2019, 2.9 million TCNs were granted permits to move to the EU, the number decreased to 2.2 million in 2020.11

Migration, as by now should go without saying, is a very complex phenomenon that comes in many shapes and forms. Following what came questionably to be heralded as a 'migration crisis' in 2015, the main focus was evidently shifted to the irregular forms of migration – to the extent that the terms 'migrant' and 'refugee' were occasionally used as synonyms. Free movement, migration and asylum were linked when large numbers of arrivals in Europe and secondary movement to other member states led to the reimposition of border controls between some EU member

11 Eurostat, 'Migration and Migrant Population Statistics *–* 2021', Online Data Codes: migr\_imm1ctz and migr\_pop1ctz; Tarchi et al., *Atlas of Migration – 2021*.

states.12 Following Czaika and de Haas's earlier observation,13 despite the extensive media and scholarly attention paid to irregular and other forms of 'unwanted' migration, the great majority of migrants still abide by the rules and regulations and move via regular channels. Geddes posits that the representation of asylum and third-country migration has been highlighted because it does not easily fit with a teleological representation of free movement and its relationship with the 'European project'.14 Indeed, while free movement has been organized in this project as a core component of the EU's identity, migration and asylum have a much more ambiguous relationship with it, with a marked determination to organize the exclusion of those forms of migration defined by member states through their policies as unwanted, such as asylum seeking and irregular migration.15

Rather than migration per se, it is its chosen framing and representation that poses a problem. The widely shared images of desperate refugees trying to sneak into the EU over, under or through various fences have played into more enduring, often racialized, concerns about large-scale migration to the EU, reconfirming the perception that the situation is out of control and that order needs to be restored at 'our' borders.16 The impact of framing is also evident in comparisons between the 2015–16 situation and the current Russian aggression against Ukraine. While in the former a little more than a million new arrivals were seen to challenge the resilience of the world's wealthiest continent, the around eight million who have fled from Ukraine (at the time of writing) have been met with appropriate yet unnoticed hospitality and unity. The apparent difference in the treatment of refugees in the EU demonstrates obvious limitations

13 Czaika and Haas, 'The Effect of Visas on Migration Processes', 893–926.

12 Tanja Börzel and Thomas Risse, 'From the Euro to the Schengen Crisis: European Integration Theories, Politicisation, and Identity Politics', *Journal of European Public Policy* 25/1 (2018), 1*–*26.

14 Geddes, *Governing Migration beyond the State*, 118.

to humanity,17 highlighting the inability of European countries to meet their obligations, at least equally and unconditionally. It also proves that the alleged 'refugee crisis' in 2015–16 could have been avoided if there had been the political will to do so.

While there are certainly more people on the move today than in previous decades, as Mitchell, Jones and Fluri explicate,18 the total number of irregular arrivals in Europe and the so-called Global North more generally has remained relatively modest, despite the political and media circus that has commonly presented the situation within a crisis frame.19 The prevailing rhetoric depicting migration as a concern, problem or threat20 continues to outperform the scientific evidence for immigration's positive economic and social impact.21 Migration has been and will continue to be an important factor in EU population dynamics; many European countries will simply not be able to cope without migrants. As the statistics clearly indicate, migration – both regular and irregular – is a global rather than a European phenomenon. Although nearly half of international migrants are born in Asia, North America has recorded the largest gain in their absolute number.22 More than a third of international migrants move between countries in the Global South, a greater share than those moving from the Global South to the Global North.

Globally, by far the most striking increase has been witnessed in the number of those forcibly displaced by war, persecution and other violence. At the end of 1960, the total number of displaced people worldwide was 1.6 million; yet by the end of 2020, the figure had already risen to 82.4 million and has since continued to rise.23 As such, between 1960 and 2020, the number of displaced people increased more than 50-fold. Of the 82.4 million, more than 26.4 million were refugees, which equates to 12% of all international migrants. The number of refugees worldwide decreased from 1990 (21.3 million) to a 26-year low in 2005 (13 million) before beginning to climb again. This moderate increase lasted until 2011, after which the rise has been more rapid. The share of refugees among migrants has also grown, indicating that forced displacements across national borders have continued to increase faster than voluntary migration. Yet by far the most significant increase is in the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) – those who have not crossed a border at all. This figure hovered around five million throughout the 1990s and until 2005. The rise has since been increasingly rapid. By the end of 2020, the figure had reached 48 million according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), or even more than 55 million based on the estimates of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).24 This significant group of the forcibly displaced often escapes media attention, populist threat narratives and migration statistics, for they do not travel internationally and therefore do not need to be hosted by another country. Apparently, in many fora, a person is perceived differently only when they have crossed the constructed political line.

The Covid-19 pandemic has had major implications for international migration flows. The foremost impact has been inflicted by travel restrictions, temporary border closures and reduced service provision capacities – for example, regarding the processes to apply for and obtain residence and work permits or to maintain integration programmes. The restrictive measures implemented both by EU member states, including the suspension of

24 IDMC, *Global Internal Displacement Database* (Geneva: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2020).

23 UNHCR, 'Global Trends Forced Displacement – 2020', <https://www.unhcr. org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/>, accessed 11 November 2022.

the registration of applications, and by third countries of migration transit and departure have substantially reduced the number of irregular arrivals, especially in the EU. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the vital contribution of migrants to keeping our societies and economies running.25 Moreover, it has been acknowledged at the highest level that migrants play a key role in Europe's Covid-19 response capacity and recovery from the pandemic. According to a study by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, 13% of key workers across the Union are immigrants, and in most countries, the share of extra-EU key workers is larger than the EU-mobile share.26 In this sense, the crisis has been a significant moment of revelation as it accentuated the importance of migration and mobility for countries in Europe and around the world, often making distinctions between countries of origin and destination transit outmoded. As Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson notes:

We can't fight the virus without migrants. And our economies will not recover without migrants […] If all migrants stopped working tomorrow, our economies would close down immediately. That shows migrants aren't 'them'. They're part of 'us'.27

## Redefining migration

Human migration, as the widely accepted definition tells us, refers to the movement of people from one country to another across a political boundary. In practice, a person who moves several thousand kilometres from St Peterburg to Vladivostok within the Russian Federation or from

Nome in Alaska to Miami in Florida within the US is not considered a migrant, while a person who relocates a fraction of that distance – a matter of metres on some occasions – across a political boundary from, say, Strasbourg in France to Kehl in Germany is considered a migrant. This simplistic example here is not intended to level out the complexities of migration as a phenomenon but to highlight the role of borders as well as the political identifications that delineate them. As Gorodzeisky and Leykin note, the widely and uncritically used, seemingly politically neutral, statistical category of an 'international migrant/foreign-born' population ignores historical processes of both state formation and migration, thus privileging the current ethnonational definition of the state and legitimizing exclusionary policies.28 Although where people happen to be born is arbitrary, 'the law of birth' continues largely to determine a person's legal recognition, political identification and thus mobility.29 Citizenship understood in geographical terms as related to distinct exclusive territorial states remains people's most basic political identity.30 Constructed in opposition to citizens, a nation's 'natives', migrants are constitutive of some of today's most denigrated and often dehumanized others – even while being represented as hardworking, desirable and prosperous.31

Despite the apparent trend by which borders have become increasingly understood as relations instead of fixed material things, the territorial fixity norm continues to underpin much of the modern geopolitical order and the entire international system in which we live and operate. This system of states is sovereignty, the overarching principle that orders

28 Anastasia Gorodzeisky and Inna Leykin, 'When Borders Migrate: Reconstructing the Category of "International Migrant"', *Sociology* 54/1 (2020), 142–58. See also Nicholas de Genova, 'Spectacles of Migrant "Illegality": The Scene of Exclusion, the Obscene of Inclusion', *Ethnic and Racial Studies* 36/7 (2013), 1180–98.

humanity's affairs; everything else supposedly follows from this mode of governance.32 The fundamental argument behind the territorial state cartography that states represent nations stubbornly persists: ethnicity, in the form of a common identity, supposedly resides in places that can at least be approximately mapped as bounded territories.33 Being unevenly transparent for different groups, depending on their origin, citizenship, material condition, and socio-professional belonging, borders are inevitably associated with discrimination, inequality and social injustice.34 Despite the increasing complexity and processual and relational nature of the border concept, 'politics on the line' endures35 and has, if anything, become only more strident: global politics is adamantly premised on territory and citizenship, and not on humanity.36 Despite the frequent invocation of a universal humanity and cosmopolitan ethos to justify interventions under the responsibility to protect people in motion,37 the underlying ontological premise for modern international relations continues to be tied to the unquestioned existence of and routinized relations between states. The criteria for people's access to a particular territory still depend on the paperwork related to their citizenship, often stubbornly derivative of their place of birth, not on the basis of their belonging to the species,38 recognizing our broader planetary entanglement39 and considering alternative forms of belongingness in transitioning to a less-bounded inclusivity.40

Coming up with convincing alternatives to state-centric teleology is undoubtedly challenging, and even if nationalism were understood more

reflexively,41 it might well prove unsustainable. However, an important step in the right direction would be to consider a global model for mobility that allowed changing migration patterns to be managed in a way that ended discrimination based on mere place of birth. The very concept of 'native' is itself misleading, especially if the definition applied is borrowed from biology, as it often tends to be. A native species is found in a certain ecosystem due to natural processes such as natural distribution and develops in its surrounding habitat. Whereas transplanting or moving a plant or animal from its original habitat may cause it to atrophy or even die, this seldom happens to people. Rather, many seem to do much better in another environment than the one in which they happen to originate.

Hamid makes a persuasive appeal in this direction by urging us to challenge the juxtaposition between the migrant and the native.42 He argues that humans as a migratory species have always moved across both time and geography. As none of us can be considered native to this moment, none of us is a native of the place we call home either. To be human, he maintains, is to migrate forward not only through time but also through space. To migrate is to grow as a person, as no punitive action will deter people from pursuing a better life:

We move when it is intolerable to stay where we are. We move because of environmental stresses and physical dangers and the small-mindedness of our neighbors – and to be who we wish to be, to seek what we wish to seek.43

Amid the increasingly deterrent border and migration policies of the current era, these ideas may seem idealistic. However, they point towards the need to reconsider the key dualism not only on which much of modernity has been built, but also from which many of its key challenges are

derived. To follow Feldman, considering all of us as migrants might allow a greater degree of compassion for ourselves and thus a greater degree of compassion for others.44 Once we abandon artificial distinctions between citizens and migrants, he reasons, we can learn much from the migrant experience about the more general alienation and atomization many contemporary citizens experience.45 To overcome the migrant-hood condition, people must be empowered to constitute their own sovereign spaces from their particular standpoints. Instead of basing these spaces on categorical types of people, they emerge only as particular people present themselves to each other while questioning how they should inhabit it.

Human migration has been a persistent feature of human history and will continue to be so for years to come. While recurrent crises have consolidated particular representations of what is 'normal' about migration and have evidently shaped our responses,46 it is important to remember that migration, for most of history, has been considered normal and not something to be fought against. Only recently have people on the move been depicted as a major problem. It is time to reverse this perception and, as Shah writes,47 turn migration from a perceived crisis into the solution for manifold socioecological changes. As Mbembe argues, human mobility is normal; its governance is the challenge.48

## Integration: A pivotal concept?

Formal laws, regulations and policies have been put in place in various countries to facilitate the settlement of immigrants and their integration

44 Gregory Feldman, *We Are All Migrants: Political Action and the Ubiquitous Condition of Migrant-hood* (California: Stanford University Press, 2015).

into the host society. Various indicators have been defined to measure the level of integration (e.g. OECD/European Union 2015), with the aid of which immigrants tend to be categorized in relation to their success in achieving the predefined integration benchmarks set against a normative framework and presumably agreed, often nationally defined, standards. A glance at the prevailing public and political rhetoric suggests, first, that integration – understood as a sort of ideal end state – is indeed a desirable if unfeasible goal and that success in this respect is still often considered to depend more on the immigrant's characteristics and actions than on those of the receiving society. 'Society' here usually refers to the 'country' into which immigrants are expected to integrate themselves socioeconomically and adapt to its sociocultural norms, values and customs. Used as a yardstick, integration thus continues to be assessed predominantly with quantitative measures of migrants' socioeconomic performance, commonly in contrast with the 'non-migrant' 'native' population.49 Less attention is paid to who and what constitute the host population and society to which a migrant is expected to aspire. Central to the idea of a host population as a 'norm' is that it consists of a homogeneous group into which immigrants should integrate:50 namely, a *nation-*state. It is argued here that this expectation is extremely biased and only accentuates the unfeasibility of the goal of integration by distorting the reality.

Meanwhile, many of the dominant academic approaches continue to remind us that integration is a two-way process in which both parties actively participate. Acknowledging this duality has also become popular in the associated policy circles. However, while certainly valuable in terms of checks and balances, the mere realization itself does little to blur the social boundaries and binaries between 'us' and 'them', 'insiders'

and 'outsiders', those who belong and those who are perceived as not belonging. As Klarenbeek argues, the concept of two-way integration remains underdefined, and its mere endorsement is insufficient to avoid or resolve the problems of a single-direction approach.51 As she demonstrates convincingly, despite their good intentions, many dominant theoretical approaches to the two-way nature of integration have led to internal contradictions, only adding to and reinforcing, even if implicitly and unintentionally, a one-way integration discourse.52 In other words, they have reconfirmed the existential separation between those who are considered to constitute 'society' by default and those who do not, and who therefore need to 'integrate' further.53

Even if it is bidirectional, the change both parties experience often remains completely unbalanced. This implies uneven power relations, normatively different responsibilities and thus different degrees of control of the process.54 In moving up the social ladder, being 'well integrated' becomes the highest possible achievement for an outsider.55 Yet by this logic even 'wellintegrated' immigrants can never truly become insiders, for if they could do so, they would not be 'well integrated': integration would not even be an issue.56 As long as the unquestioned image of an 'insider' continues to function as the benchmark against which the achievements of 'outsiders' are compared, the reproduction of social boundaries, inequality and the perceived difference they imply will continue to downplay any rhetorical commitments to the contrary. Such a reconfirmation of differences tends

to divert attention from the deeply rooted structural factors that maintain inequality to individual ones perceived as beyond *our* control.

The broadly established and increasingly elaborate systems for monitoring, categorizing and bordering reproduce otherness, maximizing its visibility in seeking to preserve and reconfirm a continuous positive version of the self, and the durability of the invisible social glue that is used to hold 'us' together. A 'drawing self ' is constantly present behind the portraits of others.57 The more negative the qualities attributed to 'them', the more positive 'we' seem in comparison,58 and these representations seldom seek accuracy. Indeed, following Ahmed,59 strangers are not those whom we do not recognize, but those whom we recognize as strangers. Instead of fixating on integration, it is these subtle forms of sociocultural bordering to which attention must be paid to advance our societies' resilience, well-being and fairness. Certainly, the immigrant's integration is not only shaped by explicit integration policies;60 informal institutions among immigrants – such as religion and culture – can also determine its success, and immigrant groups may become either an accepted part of society at the same level as comparable 'native' groups, or they may isolate themselves and remain unrecognized and excluded.61 However, more integration does not necessarily equate to more harmony, as changing power relations cause social friction.62 An integrated society is not automatically 'better' or more socially just.

Instead of continuing to fine-tune the analytical approach or fashioning yet another conceptualization of integration, this thesis claims that the entire premise of the key postulation guiding our thinking needs to be reevaluated. Like the nocturnal drunkard looking for his lost keys under a streetlight because that is where they are easiest to see, we have continued to seek solutions to the challenges we face in the areas illuminated by our past state-oriented practices. Correspondingly, the key problems that European societies are addressing with their immigrant integration logics cannot be resolved through redefinitions or re-appropriations of the term itself.63 A more fundamental readjustment is needed, and a key element of this endeavour is to advance the notions that people are not from a particular territorially bounded place and that the politics of belonging cannot be reduced to mere citizenship. Social, political and territorial demarcations persist largely because of the collective reproduction of their underlying essentialist conception and logic; yet belongingness and the conception of home are increasingly formed in relation to movement. In an increasingly mobile world, it is necessary to acknowledge the multi-layered aspects of belonging, which often straddle the boundaries of nation and state.

The inclusion and emplacement of migrants therefore needs to be understood as both a multi-level and multi-dimensional process, in which the different layers – if intertwined – may also have their own dynamics. While belongingness must often still be enacted within the frame of the respective nation-state, and belonging to a certain nation continues to have an undeniable appeal,64 the assumed deeply rooted ideal linkage between these concepts needs to be rethought – just as it is necessary to rethink the relationship between citizenship and the state. As Yuval-Davis argues, people can simultaneously 'belong' in many different ways and to many different objects of attachment.65 Belonging, she reasons, is not only

64 Jussi P. Laine, 'The Multiscalar Production of Borders', *Geopolitics* 21/3 (2016), 471.

63 Fran Meissner and Tilmann Heil, 'Deromanticising Integration: On the Importance of Convivial Disintegration', *Migration Studies* 9/3 (2020), 740–59.

65 Nira Yuval-Davis, 'Belonging and the Politics of Belonging', *Patterns of Prejudice*, 40/3 (2006), 199; Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and Kathryn Cassidy, *Bordering* (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).

about social locations and constructions of individual and collective identities and attachments; it is also about how they are valued and judged.66 Belongings are seldom clear-cut; rather, they are fragmented and coincidentally rearticulated as constellations in which national identification plays only a part.67 This argument is made here in full acknowledgement of the incontrovertible fact that the idea of people being able to carry 'bundles of rights' with them across nation-state borders is one of the first lines of attack by nation-states when a perceived 'crisis' emerges.68

## Conclusion: Towards belonging in a globalized world

To confront the simplistic relapse into state-centric thinking in times of 'crisis',69 it is necessary to highlight shifting power relations at the global, regional and local levels.70 Here, the increasing significance of the global level at the expense of regional integration and bilateral agreement has reawakened interest in interstate co-operation.71 The rapid changes associated with globalization have decentred the state in some respects;72 yet the legal power to determine who is and who is not admitted to the territory of a particular country and recognized as a citizen is an enduring

arena of state control.73 EU member states have insisted on maintaining absolute control of 'security matters' – a category into which migration is too often considered to fall. Despite the intra-EU levelling process intended to recommit member states to the duty of solidarity, an *extra*-EU co-operation strategy for third countries has gained ground as the member states have sought to renegotiate their obligations to the Union to maximize the policy space around migration and asylum – that is, to reaffirm migration as 'foreign policy'.74

While numerous scholars have urged that both the moral and economic imperatives of migration be recognized in line with what Juss75 calls the 'global public interest', pleas for unbounded inclusiveness76 have fallen prey to renationalized populist politics and methodological nationalism. Within contexts of socioeconomic stress and geopolitical instability – of which a prime example is the current crisis inflicted by the persistent pandemic – a strong state tends to be offered and broadly accepted as a solution to the perceived chaos, and simplistic politics as a cure for the complexities it has cultivated. These increasingly emotional reactions have not only largely overshadowed the scientific evidence pointing to the benefits of immigration, they have also turned a blind eye to the increasingly evident notion – for example, advocated by Jones and Wonders77 – that the policies of nation-states often *produce* migration, harm and even violence.

While inclusive legal frameworks and efforts for effective global change are needed – the *Global Compact* being the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement aiming for holistic and comprehensive change – the local level has been gaining importance as a setting for inter-ethnic coexistence and participatory action. In contrasting the rise of crisis frames and a politics of exclusion, human agency deserves to be restored to the centre to redefine the meaning of belonging in a globalized world.78 In this endeavour, the place-bound social relations of individuals offer great potential. Ultimately, despite globalization processes, place continues to be an object of strong attachment79 and an inescapable aspect of people's everyday lives and experiences.80 However, once again, countering migrant exclusion requires more than universal appeals to inclusive egalitarian principles: abstract principles and norms need to be translated into concrete action, which is often more easily said than done. Achieving inclusivity requires concrete knowledge and practical guidance that encourage local administrations and other stakeholders to see this as part of their responsibility and fulfil their role in this respect.

Place-making by migrant populations has long been seen as an essential strategic response to the alienation, isolation and discrimination experienced by newcomers because it helps cement new identities as well as sustain and empower marginalized communities.81 However, these new places may be accompanied by the negative implications of heightened ethnic differences through place-making.82 A new understanding of being

local – of belonging – should be sought through processes of inclusion and mutual recognition. These require continuous negotiation, but they fuel a social innovation in which the focus can be shifted from integration and assimilation to the co-creation of new transcultural spaces, economies and communities. This approach promotes social inclusion as a non-linear and reciprocal interaction through which new population groups negotiate new cultural meanings and tangible rights of citizenship with the existing populations within systems of socio-economic, legal and cultural relations whose basic characteristics need to be considered if a sustainable, equitable and resilient society is to be created for all. The resulting communities will not only be different; they will be better adapted to thrive in the context of the current era's seemingly endless uncertainty.

## Bibliography

——, 'Against "Immigrant Integration": For an End to Neocolonial Knowledge Production', *Comparative Migration Studies* 6/31 (2018), 1–17.

#### Roberta Medda-Windischer and Karl Kössler

## Integration of Third-Country Nationals in Subnational Entities: Is Regional Citizenship a Viable Instrument?1

## Introduction

The gradual decline of the Westphalian nation-state has undermined the monolithic concept of citizenship as being monopolized by one government level – the nation-state – and as being limited to one clear-cut group – citizens – clearing the way to new concepts such as 'regional citizenship'. In several respects, it is very much as summarized by the historian Hans Mommsen, recalled in the introduction of this volume: 'Die Nation ist tot, es lebe die Region.' (The Nation is dead, long live the Region.). In other words, the perception of the nation as the only marker of collective belonging in Europe has become increasingly outdated and in fact given way to other territorial identities, in particular a regional one. Unsurprisingly, this development has been accompanied by the decentralization of competences to sub-national authorities in such areas as social welfare, labour market, housing and language use. Also, this made it conceivable to think of such notions as regional, residence-based citizenship

1 This chapter draws on previous publications by the authors, in particular, Roberta Medda-Windischer and Karl Kössler, 'Introduction, Special Issue on Regional Citizenship', *European Yearbook of Minority Issues* 13 (2014), 61–78, and Roberta Medda-Windischer and Andrea Carlà (eds), *Migration and Autonomous Territories. The Case of South Tyrol and Catalonia* (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

for third-country nationals (TCNs). Particularly relevant in this regard is the extent to which rights – following the classical Marshallian conception civil, social and political rights – have been decentralized and how participation and belonging have been rescaled at the sub-national level. In this regard, as mentioned by the editors of this volume, the process of regionalization appears as a tool to go beyond a 'nation-cum-state paradigm', based on the slogan 'one nation, one culture, one state', recognizing simultaneously sub-state entities and state borders.

The main research questions in this context are as follows:

Within this broad debate on alternative concepts of citizenship, this chapter concentrates on whether non-citizen membership, or 'denizenship', is a temporary deviation from membership as citizens, as opposed to a new model of membership in its own right that entails the decline of traditional citizenship and the concomitant rise of the concept of 'regional citizenship' based on residence. From the analysis of binary dimensions – sub-state and state levels – and by combining perspectives from regionalism and minority rights studies, this chapter aims to explore whether the concept of regional, residence-based citizenship can be considered as a means to strengthen the inclusion processes of TCNs. This is in line with the constructivist tradition highlighted by the introduction to this volume, which asserts that any groupings of people are communities based on fictitious constructions and narratives along the line of Anderson's definition of nations as 'imagined communities'.

This chapter is organized into four sections. The first and second parts provide a deeper overview of the above-mentioned trend towards differentiation that took citizenship beyond the nation-state level and the binary distinction between insiders (citizens) and outsiders (non-citizens). The third part briefly illustrates some emblematic examples of alternative forms of residence-based citizenship from Europe and beyond. The chapter concludes with some final remarks on how the citizenship approaches of sub-national territories impact individuals and groups with migration backgrounds.

#### *The relevance of differentiated citizenship*

Until quite recently, citizenship was taken for granted and uncontested because it appeared well-defined and not worthy of further exploration.2 The 1990s, however, arguably saw the return of citizenship 'with a vengeance'3 – a situation that is epitomized by the reform of citizenship legislation in a number of countries and the proliferation of multi-disciplinary research initiatives. Even though the notion of citizenship has undergone numerous shifts in its long history, citizenship, at its essence, concerns the relationship between an individual and a political community that has been historically linked to the Greek tradition of collective selfgovernment and the Roman idea of the individual having a formal legal status.4 While these historic precursors lay out the most basic and thus wholly general statement one can make about citizenship, the latter is today understood in manifold ways, though two main views have come to dominate.

2 See Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson, *Citizens and Migration: Globalisation and the Politics of Belonging* (London: Macmillan, 2000), 1.

Many legal scholars, primarily those specialized in public law or international law, tend to subscribe to the traditional static view of citizenship as a formal legal status, which reflects – most visibly through a passport – full membership in a state and, as such, entails a set of particular rights and obligations. From this perspective, citizens and foreigners are 'correlative, mutually exclusive, exhaustive categories'.5 It is this traditional understanding that is at the heart of a number of important ongoing debates. Among these are the debates about the increasing or decreasing value of citizenship,6 the rise of dual citizenship,7 the increasing convergence of citizenship regulation8 through the 'migration of constitutional ideas'9 and, not least, the insufficiency of *ius soli* and *ius sanguinis* as the sole sources of citizenship.10 By contrast, mainly in social science and partly among experts in

#### *Regional Citizenship* 43

European law, citizenship has recently come to be understood, especially fuelled by debates about EU citizenship, in a much broader sense as a threedimensional concept that encompasses the following components: rights, participation and a sense of belonging.11 Through the recognition of rights as one of these dimensions, commonly by invoking the classic rights-based citizenship notion of the sociologist T. H. Marshall,12 this social science view also possesses a salient legal element. Yet, it then extends beyond the realm of law by adding participation as well as a sense of belonging to the political community as further building blocks of citizenship. Participation is hereby understood quite broadly as not only taking part in political life but more generally in civil society. A sense of belonging is considered crucial because it forms the basis for solidarity and trust, features that distinguish a community of interacting fellow citizens from a mere sum of individuals.

The development and diffusion of this three-dimensional understanding of citizenship must be seen in the context of increasing differentiation of a concept that was long perceived as monolithic. More precisely, the traditional citizenship notion focused on *one dimension* (the legal status), *one government level* as conferring this status (the nation-state level) and *one clear-cut group* holding this status (the citizens). From an extended perspective, this monolithic citizenship is closely tied to the paradigm of the Westphalian nation-state and thus historically contingent. It has been noted that the phenomenon of 'unitary citizenship is the historical exception' and a quite 'recent aberration'.13 Just as the multifarious forces

of globalization, international migration and legal integration have set in motion the gradual decline of the Westphalian nation-state,14 monolithic citizenship has also come under pressure. In Europe, it was not least the introduction of EU citizenship with the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht that provided a fillip for a conceptual differentiation of citizenship. This institutional development sparked a lively academic debate that has taken up the notion of three-dimensional citizenship. The trend towards differentiation also formed the basis for making the case for such notions as 'regional citizenship' and residence-based 'civic citizenship' of TCNs, terms that from the preceding monolithic perspective would have been summarily dismissed as blatant oxymorons. These notions suggest, respectively, that the concept of citizenship is no longer seen as being monopolized by *one government level*, that is, the nation-state,15 nor as being limited to *one clear-cut group*, that is, citizens.16

#### *Citizenship above and below the nation-state level*

#### European citizenship

European citizenship is a matter that many commentators consider to be more symbolically than legally relevant.17 In their view, the Maastricht Treaty has achieved little more than codifying the *acquis communautaire* on the position of the member states' citizens. It only added some particular elements such as active and passive voting rights in the elections for the European Parliament and municipal elections in the member state of residence (even if these are different from the state of which one is a citizen) and the right of petition to the European Parliament and the right of application to the Ombudsman.

Another position of these commentators is that European citizenship is just an additional dual citizenship, which encompasses both national and European citizenships without jeopardizing the principle that sovereignty remains strongly rooted in the member states. Given that the institution of Union citizenship has added little that is substantially new to the existing legal status of those who acquire it, sceptics dismiss European citizenship as being either a 'mercantile form of citizenship born out of the demands of economic integration, and/or empty rhetoric designed to enhance the Commission's legitimacy'.18

In spite of the modest character of the rights (and the complete absence of duties) attached to European citizenship, EU member states' heads of government who decided to insert the chapter on Union citizenship into the EU Treaty were probably attracted by the integrative potential that

17 Among the first critics, see Leon Brittan, 'Institutional Development of the European Community', in *Public Law* 92/4 (1992), 567–79, 574. More recently, see Christian Fernández, 'Patriots in the Making? Migrants, Citizens, and Demos Building in the European Union', *Journal of International Migration and Integration* 13/2 (2012), 147–63.

18 Theodora Kostakopoulou, 'European Citizenship and Immigration after Amsterdam: Openings, Silences, Paradoxes', *JEMS* 24/4 (1998), Adrian Favell (guest ed.), Special Issue 'The European Union: Immigration, Asylum and Citizenship'.

citizenship had manifested in the framework of the European nationstates in the past 150 years. Thus, they sought, perhaps only rhetorically, to exploit this potential and use it as a lever to secure their goal: to create an 'ever closer Union of the peoples of Europe'.19

According to some scholars, Union citizenship entails the prospect of a 'post-national' political arrangement, which may facilitate multiple memberships by individuals in various overlapping and interlocking communities formed at various levels of governance.20 Union citizenship occasions the 'promise' of a heterogeneous, de-nationalized democratic community in Europe.21

In this respect, the novelty of European citizenship may lie in its capacity to change our understanding of citizenship and prompt a rethinking of membership with a view to opening up new forms of political community.22 Stated another way, Union citizenship holds out the promise of

19 Preamble to the Treaty on European Union (TEU) (Maastricht, 7 February 1992). See also, the Preambles to the Consolidated Versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, OJ C115, 9 May 2008, and the Preamble to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon. Likewise, article 1(2) TEU (Lisbon consolidated version, 2008) declares: 'This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizens.' Among the recent studies on EU citizenship, see Elspeth Guild, Cristina J. Gortázar Rotaeche and Dora Kostakopoulou (eds), *The Reconceptualization of European Union Citizenship* (Leiden: Brill-Nijhoff, 2014).

what Kostakopoulou calls a 'constructive' approach to citizenship that is more respectful of diversity and more inclusive than nation-based models of citizenship.23

European citizenship would then consist of 'shared values, a shared understanding of rights and societal duties and shared rational intellectual culture which transcend organic-national differences.'24 Obviating the need to favour one country's cultural heritage over that of another, the 'shared values' on which a specifically European identity might be constructed range from the respect for democracy, fundamental rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, to equality, tolerance and the rule of law. These values find affirmation in the preamble and article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (Lisbon consolidated version, 2008), and in the Preamble to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The latter refers to a 'peaceful future based on common values' and stipulates that the function of the Union and therefore of the European Court of Justice is to 'contribute to the development of these common values'.25

Clearly, the construction of a European identity along these lines, valuing ethno-cultural diversity, can be a powerful tool of integration for all those who have a legitimate stake in the EU's future, be they nationals of the member states or long-term residents who happen to be TCNs. However, that EU citizenship depends upon possession of the citizenship of a member state26 has brought with it forms of exclusion and even

discrimination against TCNs, some of whom have always lived on EU territory and have made the EU the centre of their socio-economic lives.27

#### Regional citizenship

While one dimension of multi-level citizenship concerns the European level, a second one pertains to the regional level.28 If one focuses exclusively on the above-mentioned traditional understanding of citizenship as a formal legal status,29 the regional dimension remains rather limited. As has been rightly pointed out, granting citizenship is, even in the face of globalization, one of the remaining exclusive domains of the state because it cannot be bestowed by either transnational economic actors30 or by international or supranational institutions.31 Even though a similar formal status entailing certain rights and obligations was commonly granted by cities until the nineteenth century, the reconfiguration of citizenship during that time made the nation-state the purportedly exclusive territorial frame of reference. Notwithstanding the gradual

should be defined as an autonomous concept. See also article 20 of the TFEU, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon (2008).

27 Since the decisive qualifying factor for acquiring EU citizenship is through citizenship of a member state, this results in the exclusion from the European citizenship of approximately 20 million residents on the EU territory who are citizens of third countries.

28 See Medda-Windischer and Kössler, *Regional Citizenship as Loophole or Tool for Inclusion?* .

29 See the first section of this chapter.

30 Nonetheless, these actors often have considerable influence on states in citizenship matters. Arguably, this influence also contributes to an increasing focus on the accumulation of economically productive human capital in both immigration and citizenship policies. See Ayelet Shachar, 'Picking Winners: Olympic Citizenship and the Global Race for Talent', *Yale Law Journal* 120/8 (2011), 2088–139. This trend has been aptly termed 'citizenship by economic contribution'. Kim Barry, 'Home and Away: The Construction of Citizenship in an Emigration Context', *NYU Law Review* 81/11 (2006), 11–59, 36.

31 Even EU citizenship has a merely derivative character as it depends on possessing the citizenship of a member state.

decline of the Westphalian nation-state in recent decades, regions still play no more than a marginal role regarding formal citizenship. Most constitutions define this subject matter as an exclusive jurisdiction of the national government with regard to both its legislative and executive dimensions, with implementation usually being delegated to local branches of the national administration. Moreover, national governments have recently reinforced their leading role in a number of countries, including Germany in 1999 and Australia in 2007, by adopting a citizenship legislation in which they introduced citizenship tests and determined criteria for passing.

A notable exception to this centralization trend is Switzerland, where the cantons are empowered by virtue of article 37(1) of the Swiss Constitution32 to establish their own criteria for naturalization. The fact that Swiss cantons make effective use of this opportunity in practice results in substantial variation. For instance, the requirement of residence in the respective canton ranges from only two years in Geneva to 12 years in Nidwalden.33 Other sub-national entities like the German *Länder* are not authorized to (co-)regulate access to citizenship, but they still have a significant bearing on it through their discretion in applying national regulations concerning naturalization.34 Further, in other countries, subnational entities can exert only a degree of influence in the area of citizenship which is, in the absence of a significant legislative and executive role, dependent on their ability to set the agenda and lobby the national government. This has arguably been the case with the restrictive turn of Belgium's 2012 citizenship reform, which brought legislation adopted by the National Parliament more in line with Flemish preferences.

Taking this three-dimensional understanding of citizenship as a point of departure,35 multi-level constellations are quite different and much more susceptible to a substantial role of sub-national entities. From a comparative perspective, regions with a significant share of 'old minorities' are particularly active in this regard. For these regions, creating a cohesive community through some sort of regional citizenship based on rights, participation and a sense of belonging is usually an important element of a broader minority nation-building project, which is aimed at competing with the rivalling project of the majority.36 Even if regions typically cannot rely in this regard on the (national) power to grant formal citizenship, real-life socialization patterns of newcomers actually often occur on a regional scale. In other words, 'immigrants are naturalised as citizens of Belgium, Germany, Italy […] but they are socialised as Walloons or Flemish, Bavarians or Hamburgers, Venetians or Sicilians'.37

In this context, the creation of a distinct sub-national political community based on rights, participation and belonging can be a means to a different end. In some cases, the construction of regional citizenship is rather inclusive towards immigrants.38 This may result, for example, from the perception that a sense of belonging of newcomers, which is at least as

35 See the first section of the chapter.

strong regarding the region as the national level,39 is crucial for winning them over as political allies against the national government, for realizing the social capital40 or for unlocking the endogenous economic potential41 of the region. In other cases, it is quite exclusive and characterized by a rationale of fending off newcomers. In these sub-national entities, the 'cultural turn in citizenship discourse and practice'42 that is most clearly illustrated by the trend towards citizenship tests with culture-related contents may be even more pronounced than at the national level. A prime example is the 2003 Flemish decree on *inburgering* (citizenization),43 which reflects a strong emphasis on language, culture and values of the receiving society, that is, the society of the region, and thus starkly contrasted with, until then, quite liberal national policies.44

While granting formal citizenship remains a stronghold of the national government, creating regional citizenship in the broader three-dimensional sense may be an alternative project, which most sub-national governments are able to realize on the basis of their existing legislative powers. In this regard, most relevant are their competences in such areas as social welfare,

labour market, housing and language use.45 The Flemish government made extensive use of these competences in order to define the boundaries of regional (social) citizenship. For instance, in a decree from 1999, the government made access to care insurance dependent on a designated period of residence in the Flemish region, while residence in *any* part of Belgium is sufficient in the rest of the country. Another example is the reform of housing legislation in 2006 that made the willingness to learn Dutch a condition for access to social housing for all residents of the region.46 Beyond the powers of ordinary legislation, some sub-national governments may rely on the additional tool of guaranteeing particular rights in quasiconstitutional documents, which are due to strict amendment procedures quite firmly entrenched, in their efforts to create regional citizenships. In many cases, fundamental rights catalogues of national constitutions are 'a floor rather than a ceiling' – regions are in principle empowered to expand this minimum standard.47 The 2006 Statute of Catalonia is, in this regard, particularly far-reaching as it includes an entirely new Title I with as many as 40 provisions.48 The comprehensiveness of this fundamental rights catalogue and its central position at the beginning of the statute clearly demonstrates the ambition to make it a visible symbol of regional citizenship.49

#### *Regional Citizenship* 53

Under scrutiny, certain limits for any citizenship construction by subnational governments emerge from both the national and the European levels. As to the national level, this is demonstrated, for instance, by judgements of the Spanish Constitutional Court. This body recognized only some of the entitlements enshrined in the regional statutes, such as participatory rights, as fully fledged individual rights and 'downgraded' others, such as the many social rights, to guiding principles (*principios rectores*) that are not directly enforceable.50 With regard to the supranational level, the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of nationality (article 18 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; TFEU) is most relevant.51 As famously declared by the ECJ in *Bickel and Franz*, this provision not only protects EU citizens with residence in the respective region but equally applies to those without it.52 The only EU citizens not covered by article 18 of the TFEU are therefore citizens of the same member state, who are *not* at the same time residents of the respective region.53 These intricacies remind us that any construction of regional citizenship does not take place in a vacuum, but rather is situated in a multi-level context and thus inextricably interrelated with rules stemming from national and supranational legal orders. As a result of this legal pluralism, the situation concerning the statuses that different groups of people hold within this multi-level context is also highly complex.

#### *Citizens, EU-citizens and immigrants as denizens*

In liberal democracies, citizenship gives individuals the right to vote, run for office and participate freely in public activities, while also requiring the obligation of paying taxes and possibly serving in the military. This has, in turn, led many to proclaim the increasing irrelevance of citizenship

50 Spanish Constitutional Court, Sentencia del Tribunal Constitucional 247/2007 and 31/2010.

51 For an in-depth analysis, see Dimitry Kochenov, 'Regional Citizenships and EU Law: The Case of the Åland Islands and New Caledonia', *ELR* 35 (2010), 307–24.

52 European Court of Justice, Case C-274/96 Bickel and Franz [1998] ECR I-7637, 24.

53 Government of the French Community (C-212/06) (2008) ECR. I-1683, 63.

in the nation-state. According to this argument, since many social rights can now be achieved without political rights and since an increasing number of political rights are now available at the sub-national and supranational level, national citizenship no longer matters in this new postnational era.54

Despite these arguments, it is undoubtedly far too early to dismiss the relevance of the nation-state and citizenship for several reasons. First, the right to vote and run for office in national elections are still extremely consequential. Non-citizens, even if they are permanent residents and longtime workers, have limited opportunities to participate in the democratic process at the national level. Since citizenship, immigration and asylum policies are generally implemented at the national level, despite the efforts at the EU level to adopt common guidelines and cases in which non-citizens are allowed to participate in local elections, non-citizens are generally still excluded from decisions that may directly affect their own lives.

Second, even though many social rights are generally guaranteed to everyone regardless of their citizenship, there are several countries where non-citizens are still excluded or hampered in accessing significant social benefits. In other words, while the modern welfare state undeniably provides greater benefits to immigrants than at earlier points in history, noncitizens continue to receive significantly fewer social benefits than people with national citizenship.

Third, although citizenship is generally not relevant for most private sector employment, it is nonetheless important in the allocation of many public sector jobs. Within the EU itself, while EU citizens can automatically live and work in another EU country, TCNs have the right to reside and work in an EU country other than the country into which they have

54 See David Jacobson, *Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship* (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 8; Saskia Sassen, *Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation* (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 95; Saskia Sassen, 'The De Facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy', in Christian Joppke (ed.), *Challenge to the Nation-State* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 49–85; Yasemin N. Soysal, *Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

immigrated only after five years of continued residence and fulfilment of certain integration requirements.55 Moreover, EU preference for employment is a principle commonly accepted and even included in the Framework Employment Directive.56

In short, despite the argument that the concept of citizenship has undergone a process of transformation into what Christian Joppke calls 'citizenship light',57 national citizenship endures as an essential and lasting feature of modern life.

TCNs in Europe today, however, settle for something less than full citizenship and in this sense, they are currently 'denizens'.58 They have permanently settled on the territory of the member states and become de facto citizens in so far as they gained social and civil rights. However, their political and electoral rights remain by and large circumscribed, along with eligibility for welfare benefits and public sector jobs.59 As noted by Elspeth Guild, 'it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the member states consider third-country nationals, even after five years of stable and lawful residence in the Union, an intrinsically *suspect* category.'60

This 'suspicion' vis-à-vis TCNs is difficult to justify given that many of these individuals have often lived their entire lives within the territory of the member states and have made this territory the centre of their socioeconomic life. The question is, thus, whether non-citizen membership or 'denizenship' is a temporary deviation from membership as citizens, or rather, is it a new model of membership in its own right that entails the decline of traditional citizenship and the concomitant rise of the concept of 'regional citizenship' based on residence.

To find a remedy to the civic and social inclusiveness deficit of TCNs in Europe and identify an appropriate criterion to confer rights and duties to TCNs, many suggest the concept of abode or domicile, possibly even conditional upon permanent residence or residence for a certain number of years.61 In this perspective, the *Nottebohm* concept of a *genuine and effective link*62 can be moulded and developed into a broader concept in the area of integration of TCNs.

State practice suggests that an effective link to a state might include habitual and lawful residence in the state – in addition to factors such as birth on a state's territory, descent from citizens or marriage to a citizen.

#### *Regional Citizenship* 57

Long-term residence is, for instance, a well-established and globally practised principle upon which citizenship is legitimately granted through naturalization. The 1997 Convention on Nationality firmly establishes lawful and habitual residence as a legitimate means of granting citizenship generally and, therefore, of looking beyond *jus soli* and *jus sanguinis* in determining the link an individual has with a state.63 In other words, in addition to the links one is born with, 'genuine and effective' links with a state can also be acquired over time.

Bruno Nascimbene argued, back in 1996, that citizenship will gradually lose its significance in favour of the concept of abode or habitual and lawful residence, which will become the most appropriate standard to establish the link or tie between an individual and a civil or social community.64

Currently, long-term residence is the basis for acquiring the status of long-term resident, implying the right not to be expelled and a conditioned freedom of movement in the EU. The Directive 2003/109 concerning the Legal Status of TCNs who are Long-Term Residents (LTRD) sets out a status that is acquired by TCNs after five years of lawful residence in one member state.65 The status provides rights of continued residence and economic activity as well as protection against expulsion and, once acquired, the status also allows the individual to take up residence and economic activities in other member states. The LTRD does, however, leave to member states a wide margin of discretion in the implementation of its provisions. For instance, for those who are admitted into one member state, the conditions that must be fulfilled before they will be able to acquire the status of long-term resident include a requirement on integration, generally linked

to knowledge of the language(s), culture, and history of the country of new residence, to be imposed at the discretion of each member state.66

In short, a legal abode or habitual and lawful residence represents a sound legal criterion for allocating rights and duties to TCNs and enhancing their inclusion in the receiving community. The concept of abode appears to be a more objective basis for selection than the subjective national concepts of citizenship and corresponds with the principle of equal treatment. The relevance of this mechanism for the inclusion of TCNs will, however, depend not only on how it will be implemented by member states but also on their political willingness to effectively integrate TCNs.

#### *Alternative forms of citizenship: Some emblematic examples*

#### Residence-based/regional citizenship

The first example of residential citizenship is the civic citizenship introduced by the European Commission back in 1999 with the Tampere European Council where residence was introduced as the main criterion to recognize equal rights and duties to TCNs. This concept was then applied in the LTRD: TCNs acquire a long-term residence status after five years of residence in an EU member state. It provides the right not to be expelled as well as the right to take up residence and start economic activities in another EU member state. However, discretionary requirements on integration, such as tests on language, history or culture of the country of residence, can be imposed on TCNs.

The second example is Catalonia. Here, the concept of residential citizenship for foreign citizens residing in Catalonia has been widely developed and applied through institutional policies and legal documents. The main idea is that what makes a Catalan is not a matter of blood, descent or ethnic

66 See articles 5(2) and 15 of the Council Directive 2003/109/EC*.* For an overview of the integration criteria introduced by many European states, see R. van Oers et al., *A Re-Definition of Belonging? Language and Integration Tests in Europe* (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010).

origin but the decision to accept a 'shared civic identity' or 'a common public culture': this means accepting a set of values, such as human rights and democratic values, gender equality and freedom of religious beliefs, but also that Catalan language and culture must be shared by everyone as the basis for communication and participation (as in Quebec).

Third, Italy and particularly a recent judgement of the Constitutional Court on the exclusion of foreign citizens from admission to the national civil service (no. 119/2015; Giuliano Amato/*giudice redattore*). According to the Italian Constitutional Court, this exclusion was not legitimate and reasonable because, among the other arguments, it was unfair to exclude foreign citizens and lawfully resident citizens in Italy from participating in a community that must be considered broader and more inclusive than a community based on a narrow and strict sense of citizenship. The Constitutional Court has accepted the concept of residential citizenship for all those, including foreign citizens, who belong on a stable and regular basis to the community of residence. This is because the civil service is considered an important tool for inclusion and social cohesion, through which it is possible to nurture the common good (*bene comune*).

#### Municipal forms of citizenship

In Italy, other forms of residential citizenship on a local basis are found in Torino and Florence, where this symbolic citizenship of foreign citizens is recognized when they acquire the LTRD status or long-term permits (*permesso di soggiorno per soggiornanti di lungo periodo*). In both cities, the municipal authorities have also signed agreements (*Patto di condivisione/ Torino* e *Patto di cittadinanza/Florence*) with the Muslim communities whereby their members accept to share a set of common values in addition to commit themselves to follow certain rules and actively engage in projects. The idea is to enhance the sense of belonging and participation in the community of residence.

The last example is in New York. Here the idea by the then mayor de Blasio has been to issue a municipal identification card based on residence for all New Yorkers, including the undocumented immigrants living in the city (one out of ten New Yorkers have participated, approx. 850 thousand persons). With this card, undocumented migrants can, for instance, pick up their children at school or attend school meetings without having the fear of being stopped; they could even open a back account. In order to attract documented persons to avail of the opportunity, the municipal identification card provides some benefits, such as discounts on prescription drugs or free membership to important museums. Surveys have shown that this card has been successful especially among immigrants (approximately three-fourths) in increasing their sense of belonging to the city of residence.

## Conclusion

The concept of regional citizenship is nurtured by a common moral and emotional identification with a specific area, sharing key constituent principles and a collective concept of the self. In mainstream communities, this concept of identification could be stretched to include individuals and groups originating from migration. In a nation organized as a social community, whose members consider themselves a nation (Renan's 'daily plebiscite'),67 there is no need for a shared ethnicity or religion. It is the sentiment of the members of a nation that define it as such, and this sentiment can only spring from one or all of these traits, or from something totally different, such as a common territory. The consciousness of belonging to a shared territory and a common political organization, having a collective destiny with the rest of the society, is at the core of the concept of regional citizenship based on a common territorial identity.

This alternative form of citizenship, although largely symbolic, could unite all those who live in a given territory, regardless of their language, religion and/or ethnic background. This is in line with the approach of this volume, according to which identities, like borders, are social constructions which are continually framed and reframed. The concept of

67 E. Renan, 'Qu'est-ce qu'une nation ?' (1882) *Bulletin hebdomadaire*, Association scientifique de France.

regional citizenship represents a form of post-ethnic sovereignty, in which the nation is viewed as the result of progressive creation by the groups, through forms of free and spontaneous union, which entail voluntary acceptance of common principles, a shared sense of belonging, loyalty to one's adopted community and concomitant feelings of mutual trust among the individuals who belong to this political organization and live in the same territory.

The concept of regional citizenship would be an additional identity, alongside one's identity/ies, which may be based on language or religion, similar to European citizenship and its relation to the citizenship of the various EU member states.68 It would therefore be a common and overarching identity, overlapping with the single and multiple identities, without blotting them out but rather respecting and protecting them.69

The creation of a common shared identity around the concept of regional citizenship would be based on both common values – such as human rights, democracy, tolerance, equality and respect for the environment – and on a commitment to future challenges, not limited to a specific group. Thus, all individuals and groups living in a given territory would fundamentally share the same vision of a future – a concept capable of uniting people in a broader community, regardless of the emotional bonds among the members of this community that are often fragile and distant.70

However, this change of perspective on the meaning of citizenship is not easy to achieve and has its own problems: some groups may not be open and experimental while others may jealously guard their inherited identities. In the end, sincere willingness for continuous interaction, mutual adjustment and accommodation on all sides lies at the heart of any successful pluralist and cohesive society.

by the authors). See Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, 2000/C 364/01, proclaimed on 7 December 2000, amended by the Lisbon Treaty, 2007/C 303/01, 14 December 2007.

## 'Taking back control': Brexit and UK Border Policies

In 2016, the Brexit Leave campaign was centred on the notion of taking back 'control'. Declaring that the UK had reached 'Breaking Point!', the conservative government promised a new-found control over British borders and laws.1 The campaign responded to the 'European migration crisis' declared in 2014. It capitalized on the emergence of far-right movements, and their accompanying prejudice, across European Union (EU) member states – enabled by a framework where 'prejudicial language […] informs discourses, policies, strategies, and techniques'.2 Taking this into account, I consider what is meant and implied by 'regain control'. Further, I question whether, and if so when, the UK did not have control of both its external and internal borders.3 In doing so, I maintain that despite the ruptures in social continuities caused by Brexit, particularly as it coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic which has disrupted cross-border mobility on a global scale, the UK has always had control over its borders. Implications of this 'control' lie with the enormity of its humanitarian consequences, the price

of which is migrant lives seeking refuge in the UK and the EU. My argument lends credence to Castles' theory that 'the real key to effective migration management', a central political agenda point since the early 2000s, is 'reducing North-South inequality'.4 By maintaining a global racial order as established under colonialism,5 'government policy creates the crisis which it claims to solve'.6

To critique the political myth that Brexit would provide a means to 'regain control', we must consider the UK's membership in the EU between 1 January 1973 and 1 January 2021. The political narrative of 'taking back control' refers to the colonial context that dominated the world prior to the UK's accession to the European Economic Community (EEC), later forming the EU. Informed by El-Enany's argument on the centrality of empire in understanding Britain's borders and colonial rule, I understand 'regained' as a nostalgia for imperial power. The misconception in the campaign's narrative lies in its disregard of the UK-EU 'flexible membership' with regard to the four freedoms – movement, goods, capital and services – of EU border control, allowing it to opt in and opt out of different policies. Together with the non-binding nature of the Geneva Convention (1949) and of international law regimes generally, this guaranteed the UK's retention of its border control after the decline of its empire.

Investigating Britain's external border policy contributes to understanding how the UK has sought to manage diversity within the country and exert its influence within the Union to support its own domestic policy. Attention is thus paid to the Dublin Regulation and resettlement/asylum procedures and programmes, as examples of policies that Britain has been in and not in favour of, respectively. This brief history of UK-EU relations illustrates how the UK used its membership in the EU to its advantage, specifically with regard to border control. Despite the focus on asylum policies and procedures, awareness of the dangerous nature of dichotomies

between migrants is made. For example, the concept of 'mixed migration', prominent in policy circles, is often ignored with discriminative realities.7 Notwithstanding the dominant political and media narrative that the UK lost control of its borders when it joined the EU, locating this notion within the colonial roots of the modern British nation-state and of the institution of the EU will illustrate that 'European integration has [actually] served to accommodate and reinforce its border control regime'.8 Rather than strengthening control of the UK external border, Brexit forms part of a continuum of legacies of the empire seeking to define British identity, contingent, in part, on racial exclusion.

From here, a discussion of the 'hostile environment' – a means for internal, as well as external, bordering – ensues. This policy finds legal expression in the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, advancing the UK's 'culture of disbelief ' and its ties to the 'push-pull theory', which seeks to simplify the complexity of irregular migration and asylum seeking. Colin Yeo, an influential immigration barrister in the UK, explains that 'pull factors' refer to qualities that attract a migrant to a certain destination over another.9 The 'hostile environment' was established in response to

7 The term 'mixed migration' refers to both the overlapping and numerous reasons that motivate someone to migrate and the multiple migration flows that take place. Van Hear explains that the reason this is often ignored in policy is that policy regimes tend to conceptualize migrants as moving for a sole reason, categorizing them under labels such as refugee, family migrant, labour migrant, student and so on. See N. Van Hear, *Mixed Migration: Policy Challenges, The Migration Observatory* (Oxford: University of Oxford, 2011), <https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/ resources/primers/mixed-migration-policy-challenges/>. International agencies developed the term of 'mixed migration' in response to the collapse in faith in the asylum seeking processes at the turn of the century. Arguably, this is happening again in current times. See Alison Mountz, 'The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago', *New Books Network* (9 April 2021), <https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-death-of-asylum?fbclid=IwAR3GhqFqfRz 0sQTTR8p3rBYs5UODvG0bd5pxTn4nPhL1p04wNNNdQ3lZiUc>.

8 El-Enany, *(B)Ordering Britain*, 174.

9 C. Yeo, 'Introduction', in *Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System* (London: Biteback Publishing, 2020), 11.

this 'policy imaginary',10 aiming to deter migrants from seeking refuge in the UK, despite the lack of supporting evidence.11 This background allows for a better understanding of the UK's new post-Brexit asylum policy, as part of what is increasingly being recognized in scholarship as the 'death of asylum' – 'the erosion of people's rights to seek asylum'.12 It is important to acknowledge that the idea that Brexit will make Britain hostile obscures the fact that racism has long informed and, in turn, produced hostile policies.13

Last, it can be argued that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the political myth of Brexit as a vehicle for 'taking back control' of the UK's borders. The pandemic has imposed a global liminal state, and yet it has been politicized to further government objectives. This is addressed with reference to travel bans and the UK Coronavirus Red List.

In 2004, the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair referred to Britain as having 'the best of both worlds' with regard to European co-operation and migration policy. He stated:

We are not obliged to have any of the European rules here, but where we decide in a particular area, for example to halt the trafficking in people, for example to make sure that there are proper restrictions on some of the European borders that end up affecting our country, it allows us to opt in and take part in these measures.14

Indeed, despite the freedom of movement of workers from member states15 as a fundamental principle of the EU internal market programme since its inception, Lawyers For Britain explained the three-fold motivations behind the UK's ability to control its borders, regardless of its EU membership. First, the majority of migrants who come to the UK are non-EU, and thus unaffected by internal EU regulations. Second, although EU citizens had the right to seek work in the UK, they never had the right to permanent abode. Third, and in conjunction with the previous point, the UK retained its right to border control in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty by opting out of the Schengen agreement – which abolished border controls between member states.16

Conversely, the British government played an active role in the development of the Eurodac Convention (2000) to support an effective application of the Dublin Regulation. Through this database, migrants' fingerprints are collected and computerized, to address unregulated and 'illegal' migration from the 'point-of-entry'.17 This strategic and selective 'use of the EU as an alternative, co-operative venue for migration policy management […] reinforced rather than overturned established patterns'.18 By allocating responsibility for processing asylum claims to other member states, the UK sought to externalize its domestic political concerns.

The expansion of the 'hostile environment' – the political strategy seeking to deter migrants by creating hard borders – across Europe draws on the dual policies of externalization and securitization. These policies allowed the UK to maintain control over its borders through its membership in the EU. Indeed, the EU system of managing asylum rests on a person

arriving in EU territory and subsequently presenting their application. Notwithstanding the disastrous consequences for asylum seekers, including the creation of huge confinement and detainment centres in Southern Europe, the Dublin III Regulation (2013) seeks to allocate responsibility for asylum applications in the EU by 'the issue of a transit visa, the legal presence of a close family member, or in the absence of these, the first physical contact with territory'.19 The UK's geographic positioning meant the state was a major proponent of 'burden sharing', allowing for deportations back to the first 'point of entry' or safe country encountered – usually in Southern Europe. Through 'externalization and securitization' the UK's integration into the EU has allowed it to use its membership 'as a potential solution to domestic issues'.20 This has led to much controversy between member states. In August 2020, for instance, Pierre-Henri Dumont, the Calais representative in the French national assembly, accused the UK 'of lacking even an ounce of humanity for making it so difficult for people to claim asylum in the UK'.21 Whether or not Dublin III 'remains the main problem in achieving solidarity among Member States',22 the EU context is, despite its limitations, 'still the single most favourable context for cooperation'.23 In this sense, the UK's flexible relationship with the EU had previously allowed for adaptable participation and solidarity with regard to 'burden-sharing'. The UK retained the right of relocation during the Brexit transition period until 1 January 2021, with a rise in the number of deportations in December 2020.24 Now, as a third-party state to the EU, it is debatable that leaving the EU has weakened the UK's ability to control its

borders having lost access to Dublin III, with implications for the freedom of movement of UK nationals. More recently, the Home Office announced its plans to send people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda for the applications to be processed – continuing to push the border further away. This constitutes a persistent attempt to externalize the UK's immigration 'issues'. The plan has been met with both national and international uproar and legal condemnations, foreseeing future challenges in 'protecting' the UK border.25 In this regard, the EU actually served to support the UK's externalization objectives.

Furthermore, the UK participates in the United Nations (UN) Refugee Resettlement programme, leading Conservative MP Tim Loughton to declare that the UK has 'resettled more "genuine" refugees genuinely escaping war zones than any other EU Member State since 2016'.26 The idea of 'genuine refugees' alludes to the UK's 'culture of disbelief ', where they are considered to be economic migrants cheating the system.27 Moreover, the statement is misleading and fuels an already 'highly charged and not always well informed' public debate.28 Following a rise in asylum claims in the 1990s, the UK Home Office developed the 'culture of disbelief ', which led to a decline in successful asylum claims from 87% in the 1980s to 4% the following decade.29 In reality, the UN programme constitutes only 6% of the total number of asylum claims made to the EU. The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford emphasizes that 'the key word here appears to be resettled'30: the Home Office was referring to a specific asylum process organized by the UN – in which the international organization identifies refugees across the globe and transfers them to a safe country. This does not include the 94% of refugees who claim asylum by arriving at a safe destination first. Although a third of people in the UK arrive through resettlement programmes, claiming asylum through an

25 M. Townsend, Priti Patel's Rwanda Plan for UK Asylum Seekers Faces Its First Legal Challenge', *The Guardian* (7 May 2022).

alternative route is both difficult and dangerous. In fact, out of the 80 million people displaced globally at the end of 2019, 22,800 were resettled and only 3,560 to the UK.31 The country ranks sixth in terms of accepting asylum applications within the EU, following Germany, France, Sweden, Austria and Italy.32 This illustrates how the UK retained control of its borders during its membership to the EU, relying on a misconception by the general public of the word 'resettled' to further its objectives.

Immigration is not just about an 'Other', or 'them', but is also about 'us.'33 In a first-hand account of living as a migrant in Britain, it has been noted how the country is undergoing 'a period of rejection […] as the aggressive rhetoric of adhering to "British values" has catapulted itself into social policy'.34 Indeed, 'race' is central to defining 'Britishness' and nationality, drawing attention to the internal border: functional, organizational and conceptual. In the organizational aspect, the 'effect of the hostile environment for policy was to deny long-settled former colonial subjects and their descendants access to […] vital services and to detain and expel them', forcing them to live below the poverty line.35 In terms of conceptual borders, de Noronha – an academic and author of *Against Borders: The Case for Abolition* (2022) – states that 'ideas about race are sedimented and reflect colonial histories' and that we 'need to pay attention to the ways in which race shifts and gets reconfigured through immigration control'. He centres issues of 'class and race' in the 'expansion and intensification of the border in the wake of Brexit'.36 The complexity of shifting immigration laws and the legacy of the twentieth-century fear of the 'Other' has meant that Britain's racialized subjects have been continuously excluded by the state's attempt to regain control. The notion of multiculturalism – cultural

plurality – is undermined by an understanding of 'Britishness' as intrinsically white. Racism and nationalism are fundamentally linked in the UK, furthering the argument that the UK has always retained control of its borders through its understanding of who belongs. The 'culture of disbelief ' and the 'hostile environment' seek to deter migrants from trying to reach the UK and the EU, aligning with notions of belonging and 'deserving'. The 'culture of disbelief ' appears as 'a colonial-style set of assumptions about applicants' dishonesty and behaviour, particularly marked in the handling of family reunion and asylum claims',37 further alluding to the current and ongoing 'death of asylum' as a category of protection.38 Moreover, understanding internal borders allows for a better comprehension of 'migrant journeys', during which asylum seekers continue to encounter borders regardless of their physical location.

Internal borders are perpetuated by the hostile environment 'explicitly and implicitly' through the 'push-pull theory' with the objective of reinforcing the external border to migrants.39 Where life-saving is considered a 'pull factor', policymakers seek to justify the human rights violations that occur at sea and on external territories.40 While this maintains a strong external border, it also enhances the argument that the price of these policies is found in the number of migrant deaths. Although 'categorisations facilitate administrative processes', they fuel the 'policy imaginary' of pull factors,41 regardless of the theory's 'inability to explain real-world patterns and processes of migration' and its limited supporting evidence.42 El-Enany's historical approach to understanding the UK's immigration law underlines this exclusive categorization of migrants through the 'culture of disbelief ' and locates the UK's 'low recognition rate of claims originating from its

former colonies'.43 She describes Brexit 'as a nostalgia for Empire' based on unaddressed colonial legacies, including racism.44 The 2016 referendum ignores the fact that the EU had supported Britain's border control from its inception, with its membership application in 1973 contingent on the exclusion of its Commonwealth and racialized subjects.45