ABSTRACT
Historically, as these communities-polities formed as nation-states, they moved away from the ideology of blood as the basis of citizenship ( jus sanguinis) to espouse a counterideology – territorial placement as the basis of national political rights ( jus soli). The enacted practice of jus soliwas never straightforward. Having a white face or at least being European continued to have a legalized or implicit predominance in the settler states, at least for the first half of the twentieth century. For example, Australia had an explicit
THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP IN IMMIGRANT DEMOCRACIES
‘White Australia’ policy up until the middle of the twentieth century. It was implicitly based on race and blood, and particularly concerned to keep out the Chinese, even if its explicit expression was a literacy test. Across the second half of the twentieth century, these states indeed endeavoured to become more cosmopolitan. However, more recently, as significant numbers of migrants and refugees have come actively to seek relocation and citizenship, Australia, Canada and USA have by various means hardened their border protection against particular categories of such placements. The debates have been ferocious. These countries may be concerned to play a humanitarian role in the world; however, they have struggled to maintain this role in relation to refugees. They are constituted through the modern imaginary of liberal democratic norms, human rights and rule of law; however, in each country, over the last few years, rules have been bent, breached or bolstered in order to keep out those people who either do not come in an accepted way or do not fit the accepted criteria for enhancing the national interest.
