Citizenship
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Almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice is a citizen of some country. Citizenship seems very simple and straightforward, but it's anything but. For most of human history, almost everyone was not a citizen of anything. Today, it's entirely possible to change citizenship, become a citizen of multiple countries, or possibly even be a citizen of no country at all. In some countries, the issue of who can become a citizen and how are some of the biggest issues they face.

Learn more about citizenship, how it developed, and what it means in the world today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Wondery's Redacted. Did you know that after World War II, the U.S. government secretly brought Nazi scientists to America in a covert operation to advance military technology?

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The impetus for this episode came from several different topics that I had been researching. They were interesting, but weren't necessarily something that I felt could make a full episode. However, I realized that several of these topics all shared a common theme, and that theme was citizenship. And I'm not referring to citizenship of any one particular country, but rather to citizenship as an abstract idea. You might be thinking that this really isn't that interesting of a subject. If you live in a country, you're a citizen of that country. End of story.

However, there is more to it than that. There are several different theories as to when the modern-day concept of citizenship began. If we go back far enough, about 2,500 years ago, there was no concept of citizenship. If you lived in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Sumeria, or China, you would have been a subject, not a citizen. Historically, a subject is someone who owes allegiance to a sovereign or governing power, but doesn't necessarily have any reciprocal rights from the sovereign.

The status of a subject often implies limited political rights and a more hierarchical relationship between the individual and the state. This concept was more common in monarchies and empires. The first thing that could be thought of as citizenship was established in the city-states of ancient Greece. City-states such as Athens and Sparta had defined systems of citizenship by around the year 500 BC. Citizenship was tied to individual rights, responsibilities, and participation in civic life.

For instance, in Athens, citizens could participate in the assembly, vote, and own land, but these rights were reserved for a narrow class of freeborn men. Citizenship rose alongside the rise of republics. If you remember back to my episode on the topic, republics are basically just political entities without a monarch or an emperor. The Roman Republic, and later the Empire, further developed the concept of citizenship. Roman citizenship included legal protections, the right to vote, and the ability to hold office.

It was initially restricted to people in the city of Rome, but it expanded over time. It eventually included those who lived in the Italian peninsula, and under the Edict of Caracalla in the year 212, it extended citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire. This ancient origin in Greece and Rome is the first theory of when citizenship was created.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, the concept of citizenship declined as feudal systems dominated. But it persisted in some form in Italian city-states like Venice and Florence. Here, citizenship was linked to social status and guild membership. And once again, citizenship was tied to republics, not monarchies.

The big change came with the Age of Enlightenment. Key thinkers during this period developed theories that emphasized the role of the individual in relation to the state, the importance of rights, and the foundations of governmental authority. John Locke, who is often considered to be the father of liberal democracy, had a significant influence on the concept of citizenship. In his Two Treaties of Government, he argued that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Locke proposed that governments are created by a social contract where individuals consent to obey in exchange for the protection of their rights. Citizenship, in Locke's view, involved the active participation of individuals in a democratic society to ensure that the government does not infringe on these natural rights. Other Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant all contributed to this theory as well.

It should also be noted that all of these philosophers came after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established the international order that we know today. Events in the late 18th century were pivotal in redefining citizenship. The American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen emphasized rights such as liberty, property, and resistance to oppression.

The other theory of citizenship that I mentioned before claims that this was the period when the modern concept of citizenship was developed. Very slowly, the idea of citizenship began to apply to people who were once subjects in monarchies. The process in Britain, for example, began with the Magna Carta and then evolved through the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and a series of reforms in the 19th and early 20th centuries that expanded the vote to everyone.

In the 20th century, as nation-states emerged and empires dissolved, laws about citizenship became more structured across countries. Citizenship began to be codified national constitutions and legislation, emphasizing the legal and formal status of individuals within nation-states. For the most part, the distinction between citizen and subject dissolved in the 20th century. So, even if you live in an absolute monarchy, such as Saudi Arabia, you are still considered a citizen of Saudi Arabia.

What rights and obligations a citizen has will differ by country. Some countries have mandatory military service. Other countries have compulsory voting. Some countries have extensive welfare benefits, and others have firmly codified rights and liberties. In some countries, like North Korea, you pretty much get nothing. For the rest of this episode, I want to talk about some of the quirks that surround international notions of citizenship today.

For starters, most of you listening to this, but not all of you, are citizens of the country that you were born in and live in today. You had no choice in the matter. It just was bestowed upon you at birth. However, I'm also sure that there are some of you who did choose your citizenship. You moved somewhere permanently and then decided to adopt citizenship in your new country. For those who receive their citizenship by birth, there are roughly two ways that countries determine citizenship.

The first is known as jus soli, which is Latin for the right of the soil. And the second is known as jus sanguinis, which means the right of blood. Just sanguinis is a principle of nationality law where citizenship is not determined by place of birth, but by having one or both parents who are citizens of the state. This principle can also extend further to include grandparents and sometimes even great-grandparents depending on the country's specific nationality laws.

Just sanguineous emphasizes a blood relationship between the country and the individual. For example, many European countries allow you to get citizenship if your grandparents or sometimes even great-grandparents came from that country. I looked into it and I'm actually one generation too removed from getting a passport for the Netherlands or Luxembourg. Just solely in contrast is a principle where citizenship is granted to individuals born on the territory of the state, regardless of the nationality of their parents.

What is amazing is which countries practice just sanguineous versus just solely. Almost the entire New World, that being every country in North and South America, allows for just solely citizenship. The only exception is Colombia. On the other hand, almost every country in the Old World, that is all of Europe, Africa, and Asia, practice just sanguineous.

The only Old World exceptions are Namibia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Lesotho, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Pakistan. Just Sanguinis and Just Soli are not mutually exclusive. If, for example, you are born outside the United States and your parents are both citizens, then you would be a citizen as well. This, of course, raises the issue of dual citizenship. Most countries allow dual citizenship, but many countries do not.

What countries do and do not can be rather arbitrary. Germany allows it, for example, but the Netherlands generally does not, but for a few exceptions. Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom allow it, but Japan and India forbid it. This can sometimes lead to very strange situations.

For example, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was born in New York City to British parents, and he left when he was just five years old. He never lived in the U.S. after that, but because he was born there, he was technically a U.S. citizen. The United States also happens to be one of the few countries that will tax you based on income earned everywhere. Johnson was subject to U.S. taxes, even though he didn't live there or receive any services.

Before he became Prime Minister, he renounced his US citizenship because it would be sort of odd to be the leader of one country and still the citizen of another. There are more and more countries now that will sell you citizenship if you have enough money. These are usually very small countries that do it as a source of revenue. Such countries include Caribbean nations like Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Grenada. Renouncing citizenship can be very easy or very difficult depending on the country.

For most countries, it's just a matter of making a declaration and filling out a form. Perhaps the hardest citizenship to renounce is actually the United States. The United States charges a $2,350 fee to renounce your citizenship. While the number of people who renounce their U.S. citizenship is pretty small, it has increased significantly over the last decade.

In addition to having one or multiple citizenships, there are some people who have none. These are known as stateless people. Stateless people lack legal nationality, which often deprives them of basic rights and access to essential services such as healthcare, education, and employment, as well as freedom of movement.

Statelessness can result from a variety of factors including discrimination against minority groups in a country, the dissolution of nations, redrawing of borders, and gaps in nationality law. Some examples of stateless people in the world today are the Rohingya people in Myanmar, ethnic Russians in Latvia, the Bedouin Bedouins in Kuwait, Haitians in the Dominican Republic, the Roma people in Europe, and Nubians in Kenya. It's estimated that there are about 10 million stateless people in the world today.

The issue of statelessness is one that's been addressed many times over the last century. One of the biggest efforts was made by the League of Nations in 1922. Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer and humanitarian who served as the first High Commissioner for Refugees appointed by the League of Nations, created a new type of passport to assist the large number of stateless refugees resulting from World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution.

Nansen passports were designed to allow stateless people to legally cross borders, seek employment, and live in a foreign country. This was a crucial time when many people had no nationality or lost their citizenship due to political upheavals. The documents provided a form of legal status to refugees who were otherwise unable to obtain travel documents from any national government. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness was adopted to prevent and reduce statelessness around the world.

This treaty, established under the auspices of the United Nations, sets out standards and regulations by which nationality should be granted in order to avoid statelessness, particularly in cases where individuals would otherwise not have a nationality. It mandates that states grant nationality to persons born on their territory if they would not acquire another nationality automatically. The problem with the treaty is that the vast majority of countries in the world have not signed it.

Today, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees leads the I Belong campaign to end statelessness, focusing on resolving existing cases and preventing new instances through improved nationality laws and administrative practices. Most people probably don't really think about citizenship, yet it can be a very complex topic. For the vast majority of people, citizenship is just something that they were born with.

However, for some, it's something that you can renounce, gain, have more than one of, or even none at all. And it all stems back to a system developed in ancient Greece almost 2,500 years ago. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiefer. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day.

And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.