World Citizen Theory

Tag: Resident Sovereignty

  • What If Too Many People Want to Move to the Same Place?

    The hard case for Foot Democracy is not movement itself, but unequal pressure

    In the previous article, “Branko Milanovic and the Citizenship Premium”, Branko Milanovic’s idea of a citizenship premium helped explain why many people may have strong reasons to move toward richer and more stable societies.

    That raises the next question:

    What happens when many of them want to move to the same place?

    Suppose a country has good jobs, safe streets, strong schools, reliable public services, and political stability.

    Many people want to move there.

    But what if the number rises quickly?

    Housing becomes harder to find. Schools become crowded. Hospitals face longer waiting times. Local governments struggle to process applications. Infrastructure takes years to expand.

    Residents begin asking a reasonable question:

    Does freedom of movement mean that a political community must accept everyone who wants to come, no matter how many arrive or how quickly?

    The answer is no.

    Foot Democracy does not require every community to admit unlimited numbers at any speed or under any conditions.

    But pressure by itself does not justify permanent exclusion.

    The difficult question is what kind of pressure is real, how serious it is, and what a community may reasonably do about it.

    The Strongest Objection

    Foot Democracy means that people should have a meaningful ability to choose among political communities.

    That requires more than a formal right to leave. It requires realistic possibilities of Entry, residence, and eventually membership elsewhere.

    But people will not choose every political community equally.

    Some places will attract more people than others.

    So the hard case is not migration in the abstract.

    It is unequal migration pressure.

    If Foot Democracy ignores that problem, it becomes unrealistic.

    Numbers Are Not Enough

    The first mistake is to ask only:

    How many migrants are there?

    A single number tells us surprisingly little.

    Ten thousand newcomers may be easily absorbed by one large metropolitan area but overwhelm a much smaller town.

    A country may accommodate substantial migration over ten years while struggling with the same number arriving in one year.

    People may also concentrate in particular neighborhoods or regions.

    The relevant questions are therefore different:

    • How many people are arriving?
    • How quickly?
    • Where are they settling?
    • What housing is available?
    • Can schools, hospitals, transport, and administration expand?
    • Who bears the fiscal costs during adjustment?

    These are not the same problem.

    Volume, Speed, and Concentration

    Consider three communities.

    In the first, migration rises gradually over fifteen years.

    In the second, the same total number arrives in two years.

    In the third, the number is again the same, but most newcomers settle in one small region.

    The national figure is identical.

    The institutional challenge is not.

    This is why volume, speed, and concentration must be distinguished.

    A community may be able to absorb a large number of new residents over time while being unable to provide housing or public services quickly enough during a sudden surge.

    That does not necessarily mean the eventual level of migration is too high.

    It may mean the rate of adjustment is too slow.

    Capacity Is Local and Slow to Adjust

    Housing, schools, hospitals, transport, and public administration do not expand instantly.

    Planning rules, construction capacity, staffing, infrastructure, and financing all take time.

    If population grows faster than those systems can respond, real pressure can emerge.

    Migration may contribute to that pressure.

    But it may also expose weaknesses that already existed: years of underbuilding, poor infrastructure investment, staff shortages, or the concentration of jobs in a few regions.

    So the question should not simply be:

    Did migration coincide with pressure?

    It should be:

    What is causing the bottleneck, and which response addresses the actual cause?

    A capacity problem may sometimes be addressed by expanding capacity rather than restricting movement.

    That is why mobility rights require something more than border rules.

    They require mobility adjustment.

    Mobility Rights Need Mobility Adjustment

    A political community receiving more newcomers may need help adapting.

    That can include faster housing construction, additional school places, healthcare investment, administrative staff, transport expansion, fiscal transfers to high-pressure areas, and better coordination between levels of government.

    This is not purely theoretical.

    During the European Union’s 2004 enlargement, several existing member states used transitional restrictions on workers from new member states before full freedom of movement applied. The limits were temporary and structured around a transition rather than permanent exclusion.

    The United Kingdom also created a Migration Impacts Fund in 2009 to support local public services facing pressures associated with migration.

    These examples do not prove that every adjustment policy works.

    They show something narrower:

    mobility can be combined with institutions that manage transition and local pressure.

    Restrictions treat movement as the problem.

    Adjustment treats institutional capacity as something that can change.

    Sometimes both may be necessary.

    But they should not be confused.

    When Can Safeguards Be Justified?

    There may be situations in which temporary limits are justified.

    Suppose a small community faces a sudden inflow far beyond its available housing, administrative, or essential-service capacity.

    Doing nothing may harm both existing residents and newcomers.

    But safeguards should have to pass a demanding test.

    A community should be able to show:

    First, that the capacity problem is real rather than merely asserted.

    Second, that less restrictive responses—such as infrastructure expansion, fiscal support, housing measures, or administrative assistance—are insufficient.

    Third, that the safeguard is proportionate to the problem.

    Fourth, that it is nondiscriminatory.

    Fifth, that it is time-limited and reviewable.

    There is also another boundary.

    Safeguards may slow the pace of Entry. They should not solve capacity problems by creating a permanent class of residents who can live and work in the community but never gain a credible path to membership.

    This follows directly from Resident Sovereignty.

    The pace of admission may be adjusted.

    Permanent political inferiority should not become the adjustment mechanism.

    Perception and Reality Are Different Problems

    Migration politics has another difficulty.

    Residents may overestimate migration levels.

    Governments may also underestimate genuine local strain.

    Both errors matter.

    A national government may point to manageable national statistics while one city is experiencing severe housing pressure.

    A local political debate may blame migration for problems caused mainly by years of underinvestment.

    So a workable system needs both accurate data and serious attention to lived conditions.

    Political trust suffers when governments dismiss visible pressure.

    It also suffers when exaggerated perceptions become the only basis for policy.

    Neither statistics alone nor perception alone is enough.

    Hand Democracy Cannot Simply Cancel Foot Democracy

    At this point, a deeper political conflict appears.

    Residents may say:

    We live here. We should decide who enters.

    That claim reflects Hand Democracy—collective self-government by the people who live under a community’s institutions.

    Potential migrants may answer:

    My freedom should not be permanently determined by the political community into which I happened to be born.

    That claim reflects Foot Democracy.

    Neither claim can simply erase the other.

    If Hand Democracy always has absolute authority over Entry, Foot Democracy disappears whenever existing residents prefer exclusion.

    But if Foot Democracy always overrides local self-government, communities lose meaningful control over institutions they must sustain together.

    The boundary has to be worked out through institutions rather than fixed by declaring one principle supreme.

    The Goal Is Choice

    Foot Democracy does not aim to maximize migration.

    Nor is zero migration the goal.

    The objective is choice.

    People should have meaningful possibilities to remain where they are, to move elsewhere, and to build membership when they do move.

    That means reducing unnecessary barriers while building institutions capable of handling movement.

    The stable formula is:

    Mobility Rights + Mobility Adjustment.

    This Is Not the Final Answer

    Important questions remain.

    How much pressure is enough to justify a temporary safeguard?

    Who measures capacity?

    How should the costs of adjustment be shared?

    Those questions require more detailed institutional answers.

    For now, the narrower point is enough.

    Unequal migration pressure is a serious objection to a simplistic version of Foot Democracy.

    It is not a refutation of Foot Democracy itself.

    It shows that political freedom requires institutions capable of adjustment.

    Conclusion

    If many people want to move to the same place, the receiving community faces a real problem.

    Housing, schools, hospitals, budgets, and administration cannot expand infinitely or instantly.

    But that does not mean mobility must remain a privilege distributed by birth.

    The question is what follows from the pressure.

    A capacity problem can justify adjustment and, in some cases, temporary safeguards. It should not automatically justify permanent exclusion.

    Foot Democracy therefore requires more than opening borders.

    It requires political communities capable of adapting to movement without turning temporary strain into permanent hierarchy.

    That is the harder—and more realistic—version of political freedom.

    Notes

    This article distinguishes migration volume, speed, and spatial concentration because each can create different institutional pressures.

    “Mobility adjustment” refers to measures that expand or redistribute capacity in response to movement—for example housing, infrastructure, public-service funding, administrative support, and coordination between levels of government.

    Temporary safeguards in the World Citizen framework are not unrestricted emergency powers. They require a demonstrated problem, consideration of less restrictive responses, proportionality, nondiscrimination, and time-limited review.

    Further Reading

    For the argument that political-community choice requires more than a right to leave, see Foot Democracy and Migration Freedom.

    For the relationship between durable residence and political membership, see Resident Sovereignty.

    For the full treatment of unequal migration pressure and mobility adjustment, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, Chapter 16, “Unequal Mobility and Unequal Migration Pressure,” pp. 175–182.

  • Branko Milanovic and the Citizenship Premium

    How much of your economic future is decided before you make your first choice?

    Imagine two people with similar abilities.

    Both are willing to work. Both want to build better lives. Neither chose the country into which they were born.

    But one grows up in a rich country and the other in a much poorer one.

    Even before either makes an important personal choice, their economic prospects may already be very different.

    Economist Branko Milanovic has spent much of his career studying inequality at the global level.

    His work leads to an uncomfortable question:

    How much of a person’s economic future is shaped by the country in which that person is born—and later lives?

    Milanovic calls part of this advantage a citizenship premium.

    Inequality Between Countries

    When we think about inequality, we often look inside a country.

    Who is rich?

    Who is poor?

    How unequal are wages?

    How much wealth does the top one percent hold?

    These are important questions.

    But Milanovic asks us to widen the frame.

    A person’s position in the world income distribution depends not only on whether that person is rich or poor within one country. It also depends heavily on whether the country in which that person lives is rich or poor.

    In one specification of his 2015 study, country differences alone explained almost three-quarters of the observed variation in incomes across the global distribution.

    That does not mean individual effort is irrelevant.

    It means that location creates extraordinarily different economic starting conditions.

    The difference between two people may not simply be:

    one worked harder.

    It may also be:

    one began life inside a much richer economic and political environment.

    What Is a Citizenship Premium?

    Milanovic uses the language of a citizenship premium or citizenship rent to describe the economic advantage associated with being located in a richer country.

    The term should not be read as meaning that legal citizenship alone produces the income difference.

    The institutions, productivity, infrastructure, labor market, public services, security, and accumulated wealth of a country all matter.

    Workers with similar skills can receive very different incomes depending on where they live and work.

    That is the deeper point.

    The economic value of a person’s labor is shaped not only by individual effort or skill, but also by the surrounding economic environment.

    Citizenship Is Not Quite the Right Word

    There is an important qualification.

    Citizenship and residence are not always the same.

    A person may be a citizen of one country while living and working in another.

    For that reason, in later work Milanovic explicitly uses country of residence rather than legal citizenship when measuring how location affects income.

    So “citizenship premium” is best understood as a way of drawing attention to the enormous economic importance of a person’s position in the global system.

    Where a person lives can strongly shape what that person is able to earn.

    Why Migration Matters

    Once this is visible, migration takes on a different meaning.

    Suppose a worker can earn much more by doing similar work in another country.

    Migration can substantially increase the incomes of some migrants and can reduce certain forms of global income inequality, although its effects vary and receiving communities can face real adjustment costs.

    If where a person lives has enormous effects on economic opportunity, then rules determining who may cross borders also affect access to opportunity.

    This is where Milanovic’s work connects with the World Citizen framework.

    Milanovic is primarily analyzing inequality.

    The World Citizen framework asks a different question:

    What political freedom should people have when their opportunities depend so strongly on the political community in which they are allowed to live?

    I call one part of that freedom Foot Democracy.

    Foot Democracy is not simply the ability to leave a country.

    It means having a meaningful possibility of choosing another political community: entering it, establishing a life there, and over time developing a route toward membership.

    Milanovic’s research does not itself establish such a right.

    An empirical finding about inequality cannot by itself prove a political principle.

    But it makes the problem harder to ignore.

    More Migration, Fewer Rights?

    Milanovic does not stop at diagnosing the citizenship premium.

    He also asks how richer countries might become willing to accept more migrants.

    In Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, he considers arrangements in which larger migration flows are combined with differentiated status for migrants.

    That might include different tax treatment, temporary residence, restrictions on family reunification, or an obligation to return.

    The political logic is clear.

    Existing citizens may be more willing to accept additional immigration if newcomers do not immediately receive every advantage attached to full membership.

    This confronts a real problem.

    But here the World Citizen framework sets a different limit.

    It can accept transitional differences and staged rights.

    Not everyone who crosses a border must immediately become a full political member.

    But temporary difference cannot become permanent political inferiority.

    If residence becomes durable, there must be a credible route toward equal political membership.

    This is where Milanovic’s migration proposal and Resident Sovereignty begin to diverge.

    The question is not only how many people a community should admit.

    It is also what status those people should have after they have built their lives there.

    Migration Is Not an Obligation

    The World Citizen framework does not say that everyone in a poorer country should move to a richer one.

    People have homes, families, languages, histories, communities, and attachments.

    Many people do not want to leave.

    A just system cannot answer global inequality by saying:

    If your country is poor, move somewhere richer.

    Development where people already live remains important.

    So does the freedom to remain.

    Political freedom should expand options, not turn migration into an obligation.

    What About the Receiving Community?

    There is also another side of the problem.

    If the economic gains from moving to richer countries are large, many people may want to move to the same places.

    Those communities have housing systems, schools, transportation networks, public budgets, labor markets, and administrative limits.

    The individual may have a powerful reason to move.

    The receiving community may have legitimate concerns about the volume, speed, and concentration of migration.

    The World Citizen framework does not solve that conflict by declaring one side absolute.

    Foot Democracy must exist alongside Hand Democracy—the ability of people living in a community to govern their shared institutions.

    The difficult question is how those freedoms should be reconciled.

    That question will be the subject of the next article.

    From Shachar to Milanovic

    In “Ayelet Shachar and the Birthright Lottery”, the problem was inherited political membership.

    In “From Nationality to Residence”, the question became whether durable residence should gain greater weight as a basis of membership.

    Milanovic adds the economic dimension.

    His work shows how strongly opportunity can depend on national location.

    The common thread is simple:

    birth places people into political and economic circumstances they did not choose.

    The remaining question is how much power those circumstances should retain over the rest of their lives.

    Conclusion

    Milanovic’s citizenship premium reveals something that national statistics can hide.

    A person may work hard, gain skills, and make careful choices.

    Yet the economic value of those efforts can still depend enormously on where that person is allowed to live.

    That does not make individual effort meaningless.

    It means effort takes place inside institutions and economies that people do not choose at birth.

    The World Citizen framework begins from that fact but moves in a political direction.

    If political borders divide access to radically different opportunities, people need more than a formal freedom to leave.

    They need a meaningful capacity to change the political community in which they build their lives.

    If location shapes opportunity, then the freedom to change location is also a question of political freedom.

    That is where Milanovic’s citizenship premium meets Foot Democracy.

    Notes

    Milanovic has used both citizenship premium and citizenship rent to describe advantages associated with membership in richer countries. These are analytical economic terms, not claims that citizenship is literally a private property right.

    Earlier work by Milanovic used citizenship or country-related circumstances assigned at birth. Later analysis gives greater emphasis to country of residence, because citizenship and residence can diverge.

    References

    Milanovic, Branko. “Global Inequality of Opportunity: How Much of Our Income Is Determined at Birth?” World Bank, 2009.

    Milanovic, Branko. “Global Inequality: From Class to Location, from Proletarians to Migrants.” Global Policy 3, no. 2 (2012): 125–134.

    Milanovic, Branko. “Global Income Inequality in Numbers: In History and Now.” Global Policy 4, no. 2 (2013): 198–208.

    Milanovic, Branko. “Global Inequality of Opportunity: How Much of Our Income Is Determined by Where We Live?” Review of Economics and Statistics 97, no. 2 (2015): 452–460.

    Milanovic, Branko. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Harvard University Press, 2016.

    Nishimura, Toshiyuki. The World Citizen Revolution. 2026.

    Nishimura, Toshiyuki. The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society. 2026.

    Further Reading

    For the World Citizen framework’s argument about political-community choice, see The World Citizen Revolution, especially the discussion of Migration Freedom and Foot Democracy.

    For the institutional design of Entry, residence, and political membership, see The World Citizen Society.

    Related concepts on this site: Foot Democracy, Migration Freedom, and Resident Sovereignty.

  • From Nationality to Residence

    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.

    Further Reading

    Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society, Chapter 4, “Resident Sovereignty, Resident Equality, and Membership Security.”

    For the broader historical argument, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Revolution, especially the discussion of Resident Sovereignty and Foot Democracy.

    Related concepts on this site: Resident Sovereignty and Foot Democracy.

    .