Naturalization – World Citizen Theory

Who should belong to a political community?

Imagine that you have lived in the same country for twenty years.

You work there. Your family lives there. You use its roads, schools, hospitals, courts, and public services. Its taxes affect you. Its elections shape the laws under which you live.

But you were born somewhere else.

Another person was born there, holds its nationality, and has lived abroad for most of their adult life.

Should the long-term resident’s claim to ordinary political membership remain weaker simply because the other person holds nationality by birth?

In the previous article, Ayelet Shachar’s idea of jus nexi pointed toward membership based on genuine social connection rather than birth alone.

This article asks what that might mean institutionally.

Residence Creates a Political Relationship

Nationality performs many jobs at once.

It can affect who may enter a country, who may remain there, who may vote, who may hold office, who receives a passport, who receives diplomatic protection, and who may return after living abroad.

Because so many functions are bundled together, nationality can look like the natural basis of political membership.

But it is an institution.

And its functions can be separated.

The question is whether a status usually acquired at birth should continue to determine ordinary political membership after a person has built a durable life somewhere else.

A tourist spends time in a country.

A long-term resident builds a life there.

Someone who lives in a community year after year is repeatedly governed by its laws. Housing rules affect where that person can live. Education policy affects the person’s children. Tax rules shape household decisions. Public transportation, policing, healthcare, courts, labor law, and environmental rules become part of ordinary life.

I call the principle that gives this relationship political weight Resident Sovereignty.

In simple terms:

People who build their lives under a political community’s rules should have a credible route to becoming full participants in governing that community.

The principle is directional.

As residence becomes durable, inherited nationality should become less powerful as a reason for excluding someone from ordinary political membership.

Why Not Just Naturalize?

A natural response is:

Why not simply become a citizen?

Naturalization can indeed be one route from residence to membership.

The problem is whether that route is sufficiently accessible, predictable, and secure.

Depending on the country, naturalization may involve long residence requirements, language or civic tests, fees, discretionary elements, or the loss of a previous nationality.

So Resident Sovereignty does not necessarily replace naturalization.

It asks what naturalization—or another membership pathway—must become if durable residence is to provide a credible route to political membership.

A person should not be allowed to build an ordinary life under a political community’s laws for decades while the path to equal membership remains uncertain or indefinitely closed.

Why Not Use Tax Payment Instead?

A common argument says:

“If I pay taxes, I should have a vote.”

There is some intuitive force in that claim.

Taxation is evidence that a person is connected to a political community.

But it cannot be the whole rule.

Children may not pay taxes. Caregivers may have little or no taxable income. Unemployed residents, retirees, students, and people with disabilities may contribute to a community in ways that do not appear on an income-tax return.

At the same time, a person who lives abroad may own property or pay some taxes without sharing the ordinary daily life of the community.

Political membership cannot simply be measured by economic contribution.

Residence captures something broader: an ongoing relationship with a place, its institutions, and the people who share them.

This Is Not Entirely New

Residence already matters politically in some existing systems.

New Zealand provides a clear example.

A person does not necessarily need New Zealand citizenship to vote in national elections. Under current electoral rules, a person who is a citizen or a resident for electoral purposes, is at least eighteen, and has lived in New Zealand continuously for twelve months or more can qualify to enrol and vote. “Resident” for electoral purposes includes people who are lawfully entitled to remain in New Zealand without being required to leave by a specified date.

This does not prove that Resident Sovereignty is correct.

It shows something more modest:

national political participation does not have to be tied exclusively to nationality.

Institutional separation between nationality and political participation is already possible.

Residence Is Important, but Not Everything

Giving residence greater weight does not mean replacing one rigid rule with another.

Someone temporarily living abroad may still have strong political ties to a community.

A displaced person should not lose membership simply because war or disaster forced departure.

A person may have family, historical, cultural, or legal connections to more than one political community.

And recognizing the long-term resident does not automatically require stripping the nonresident citizen of every political right.

Those are separate design questions.

Resident Sovereignty therefore does not say:

Only current residents matter.

It says that inherited nationality should not remain an unchangeable barrier when a durable membership relationship has developed through residence.

Membership Can Develop Over Time

Political membership need not appear all at once.

A visitor, a temporary resident, a newly arrived lawful resident, a durable resident, and a full political member do not necessarily stand in the same legal relationship to a community.

Different forms of legal security and political participation may develop at different stages.

The exact sequence and timing do not have to be identical everywhere.

What matters is that durable residence can lead toward full political membership rather than quietly becoming permanent outsider status.

This is also why difficult cases remain.

Multiple residence, refugees, irregular long-term residence, temporary workers, students, diaspora claims, and sensitive public offices may require different rules.

Resident Sovereignty does not settle every threshold in advance.

It establishes the direction in which those thresholds should be justified.

What Happens to Nationality?

Moving political membership toward residence does not mean that nationality must disappear.

Nationality still performs useful functions.

It may remain relevant to passports, diplomatic and consular protection, protection against statelessness, some rights of return, family connections, and particular constitutional or security functions.

These functions need not all use the same legal basis.

The World Citizen framework therefore asks:

Which functions still need nationality, and which should follow residence, contribution, habitual residence, political membership, or another relevant connection?

The rule is simple:

Separate nationality’s functions before deciding which ones should change, and do not remove a useful protection before a workable replacement exists.

Pensions may depend on contribution history.

Family law may use habitual residence.

Political participation may increasingly follow durable residence.

Passports and diplomatic protection may require different arrangements.

One legal status does not have to answer every institutional question.

Territory Still Matters

A residence-based political order is not a borderless world.

Many public decisions are tied to place: housing, schools, policing, roads, water systems, land use, local taxation, and emergency services.

Political communities therefore remain territorial.

What changes is the relationship between territory and membership.

A simple way to express the distinction is:

Territory tells us where public authority operates.
Residence helps tell us who has developed a claim to ordinary political membership there.

From Fixed Membership to Revisable Membership

The deeper change is not simply from nationality to residence.

It is from membership largely assigned at birth toward membership that can change as a person’s life changes.

Birth may still create an initial legal membership.

There is good reason for that. Children need secure status. Statelessness must be prevented. Families need legal continuity.

But initial membership does not have to determine the only political community in which a person can ever become an equal member.

A person may move, build a home, raise a family, become part of a community, and live under its institutions for many years.

Political membership should be capable of recognizing that reality.

Residence is one of the main institutions that can make membership revisable.

Conclusion

Nationality often provides an initial legal membership.

But it should not always provide the final answer to another question:

Who belongs among the people who govern this community now?

Durable residence creates a real political relationship.

Recognizing that relationship does not automatically erase the political ties of citizens living abroad.

Nor does it require immediate full membership on the first day of residence.

But over time, living under the same laws and institutions should matter.

Political membership should be able to follow a life that has actually been lived, not only a status assigned at birth.

That is the basic idea of Resident Sovereignty.

Notes

Resident Sovereignty is a proposed institutional principle, not a description of current law in every country.

The World Citizen framework does not treat residence as the sole conceivable basis of every political connection.

Nor does the framework require every political right to arise at the same moment. Voting, candidacy, constitutional participation, and eligibility for sensitive public offices may involve different thresholds.