ABSTRACT
In one of the most influential studies on contemporary immigration, The Limits of Citizenship, Yasemin Soysal (1994) found that guest-workers-turnedimmigrants in western Europe have been incorporated into their host societies not as citizens but through a new model of membership-universal personhood. The new incorporation regime emerges as universal human rights are replacing national rights, and universal personhood is supplanting nationhood as the defining focus of citizenship. And yet, the sovereign nation-state still remains the sole institution that administers and enforces rights, even those conceived to be universally held. Soysal cautiously calls hers a “postnational” model of citizenship, one in which state sovereignty is contested but not yet replaced. While she is undoubtedly correct in describing this partial transformation as the sign of a transitional era, by treating universal personhood itself as a form of citizenship she obscures an important distinction and its implications for her thesis. Christian Joppke further criticizes her for ignoring the notion that “national citizenship remains indispensable for immigrant integration,” especially for second-and third-generation immigrants who would otherwise remain excluded from the national community as members of stigmatized minorities (Joppke 1999: 645). Soysal’s study leaves the nature of the relationship between national membership and postnational identity open: Is, in this view, universal personhood an attack on or an extension of citizenship? Do these types of incorporation overlap or clash? The way these questions are answered also has implications for judging whether the incorporation of immigrants eclipses or reinforces nation-states.
