Citizenship and Immigration In A Globalized World

Citizenship and Immigration

In A Globalized World 

With Patrick Weil

 Senior Research Fellow, French National Center for Scientific Research

   

Date: Thursday, 3rd March, 2011  

Time: 1:15p.m. - 2:30p.m.

Venue: Conference Room 7, Temporary North Lawn Building, UN headquarters, New York

    

For more information and to register to attend the event click here 

    

 The United Nations University Office at the United Nations is organizing a discussion as part of the UNU Midday Forum entitled "Citizenship and Immigration in a Globalized World" presented by Patrick Weil, Senior Research Fellow at the French National Research Center, University of Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne.

 In the last twenty-five years, nationality laws have been the subject of polarizing debates. The first set of disputes concerned the content of these laws: scholars have emphasized several 'structural' oppositions (ascription vs. consent, jus soli vs. jus sanguinis) that reflect different national identities or meanings of citizenship. The second and more recent set of debates has arisen from a crisis of legitimacy of "nationality." Nationality is said to have been undermined both by external competition from other affiliations and by its own inegalitarian qualities.

The presentation will show how old debates over the differences in the content of various states' nationality laws have become irrelevant. Nationality laws based on jus sanguinis (a French invention) or on jus soli (a tradition maintained by the British) have their own history developed independently of conceptions of national identity. The second set of debates has exaggerated the crisis of citizenship. In fact, far from being dépassé, National State citizenship has developed a new vitality. Once based, before the American and French Revolutions, on allegiance and protection of the King and transformed in the 19^th century into a conditional status based on rights but also on duties, citizenship has recently reached a new stage of its development as an element of an unalienable sovereignty. Therefore, in the context of globalization, a new strategic collaboration between the individual and the state has emerged as their interests have converged. 

The event is part of the UNU Midday Forum Series, which offers an intimate and informal platform of discussion to the UN permanent missions, the UN Secretariat, UN agencies, academia, NGOs and the private sector to exchange ideas on important topics related to the UN.

 Speaker:  

Patrick Weil, Senior Research Fellow, French National Center for Scientific Research

 Moderator:

Jean-Marc Coicaud, Director of United Nations University Office at the UN, New York

 For more information click here 

For free registration click here     

 Contact: Portia Gama 

Email: unuony@unu.edu

Tel: 212-963-6387

From Maria Em