Reinhard Schweitzer
Ancestral Citizenship as Restitution, Or Selective Immigration Policy? Working paper
2025.
Abstract | Links:
@workingpaper{nokey,
title = {Ancestral Citizenship as Restitution, Or Selective Immigration Policy? },
author = {Reinhard Schweitzer},
url = {https://citrest.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/WP1_FINAL_May2025.pdf, Download PDF},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-05-19},
urldate = {2025-05-19},
issue = {CITREST Working Paper 1},
abstract = {Like several other EU Member States, Austria and Spain have recently opened privileged pathways to external citizenship for descendants of the many people who had fled persecution under previous authoritarian regimes. Ancestral citizenship not only offers mobility and other key rights and opportunities for individual beneficiaries (as well as their children) but also fulfils a range of purposes for the nation-state that grants it, including intergenerational continuity and territorial or at least symbolic inclusion of people with familial ties to that state. This can be part of a necessarily complex and long-term process through which modern nation-states (and their populations) are trying to come to terms with their uncomfortable past. But it can also be seen as a tool for managing the future composition of a country’s population and thus function as an ethnically selective complement or even substitute for immigration policy. Based on a comparative analysis of legal documents, media coverage, and political debates around these two reforms and their ongoing implementation, this paper highlights the similarities and key differences between the Austrian and Spanish cases, questions some of the underlying interests, intentions, and official justifications, and thereby helps to explain how and why these reforms have come about. This analysis constitutes the first step of a multi-annual research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science that aims to contribute to a better understanding of, and more informed public and political debates about, the role of ancestral citizenship in and for contemporary Europe.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {workingpaper}
}
Like several other EU Member States, Austria and Spain have recently opened privileged pathways to external citizenship for descendants of the many people who had fled persecution under previous authoritarian regimes. Ancestral citizenship not only offers mobility and other key rights and opportunities for individual beneficiaries (as well as their children) but also fulfils a range of purposes for the nation-state that grants it, including intergenerational continuity and territorial or at least symbolic inclusion of people with familial ties to that state. This can be part of a necessarily complex and long-term process through which modern nation-states (and their populations) are trying to come to terms with their uncomfortable past. But it can also be seen as a tool for managing the future composition of a country’s population and thus function as an ethnically selective complement or even substitute for immigration policy. Based on a comparative analysis of legal documents, media coverage, and political debates around these two reforms and their ongoing implementation, this paper highlights the similarities and key differences between the Austrian and Spanish cases, questions some of the underlying interests, intentions, and official justifications, and thereby helps to explain how and why these reforms have come about. This analysis constitutes the first step of a multi-annual research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science that aims to contribute to a better understanding of, and more informed public and political debates about, the role of ancestral citizenship in and for contemporary Europe.
Francesco Pasetti, Reinhard Schweitzer
Looking back and abroad while (not) moving forward. Migration, ideas and the stability of citizenship in Spain. Journal Article
In: Frontiers in Sociology (online first), 2025.
More information | Abstract | Links:
@article{nokey,
title = {Looking back and abroad while (not) moving forward. Migration, ideas and the stability of citizenship in Spain.},
author = {Francesco Pasetti and Reinhard Schweitzer},
editor = {Salvatore Strozza and Rosa Gatti and Gianni D'Amato and Margit Fauser},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1570110, Full-Text Access
https://citrest.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/PasettiSchweitzer2025_Looking-back-and-abroad-while-not-moving-forward.pdf, Download PDF
https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/62947/the-citizenship-of-international-migrants-rethinking-the-migration-citizenship-nexus-today/, Access the Special Issue
},
doi = {10.3389/fsoc.2025.1570110},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-07-03},
urldate = {2025-07-03},
journal = {Frontiers in Sociology (online first)},
abstract = {This article addresses the remarkable stability of the Spanish citizenship regime. Since it was established in 1982, it has remained largely unchanged, despite the country's rapid transformation from a country of emigration to a major destination for non-EU immigrants. We complement existing explanations for this phenomenon by shifting the analytical focus to the realm of ideas. Based on a close analysis of the law-making process and parliamentary debates about citizenship reforms between 1978 and 2024, we argue that this puzzling stability can partly be attributed to the widely shared and remarkably stable way in which the country's political elite conceives nationality. We identify three constitutive elements that make this dominant citizenship frame: (i) the preference for blood-ties over territorial presence, (ii) the preferential treatment of emigrants (and their descendants) over immigrants, and (iii) the predilection for potential citizens' historical over contemporary connections to Spain. This set of ideas, in which political parties' views overlap, has constituted the tracks along which the country's nationality laws have evolved. It has outlived not only demographic but also political changes including the appearance of the country's first far-right, anti-immigrant party. By focusing on ideas, this article offers a new analytical and less deterministic perspective, complementing the explanatory backdrop provided to date by the scholarship concerned with citizenship law-making. Our findings and analysis contribute to a fuller understanding of the politics of citizenship in Spain and—more generally—of the ambiguous role that past, present, and future migratory dynamics (can) play in shaping—the evolution of citizenship law-making. It thereby also contributes to the literature on the multifaceted nexus between citizenship and migration and to broader debates on the importance of ideas in public policymaking.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
This article addresses the remarkable stability of the Spanish citizenship regime. Since it was established in 1982, it has remained largely unchanged, despite the country's rapid transformation from a country of emigration to a major destination for non-EU immigrants. We complement existing explanations for this phenomenon by shifting the analytical focus to the realm of ideas. Based on a close analysis of the law-making process and parliamentary debates about citizenship reforms between 1978 and 2024, we argue that this puzzling stability can partly be attributed to the widely shared and remarkably stable way in which the country's political elite conceives nationality. We identify three constitutive elements that make this dominant citizenship frame: (i) the preference for blood-ties over territorial presence, (ii) the preferential treatment of emigrants (and their descendants) over immigrants, and (iii) the predilection for potential citizens' historical over contemporary connections to Spain. This set of ideas, in which political parties' views overlap, has constituted the tracks along which the country's nationality laws have evolved. It has outlived not only demographic but also political changes including the appearance of the country's first far-right, anti-immigrant party. By focusing on ideas, this article offers a new analytical and less deterministic perspective, complementing the explanatory backdrop provided to date by the scholarship concerned with citizenship law-making. Our findings and analysis contribute to a fuller understanding of the politics of citizenship in Spain and—more generally—of the ambiguous role that past, present, and future migratory dynamics (can) play in shaping—the evolution of citizenship law-making. It thereby also contributes to the literature on the multifaceted nexus between citizenship and migration and to broader debates on the importance of ideas in public policymaking.
Reinhard Schweitzer, Tina Magazzini
Citizenship Restitution as (Disguised) Selective Immigration Policy Online
David Owen, Rainer Bauböck (Ed.): 2025, visited: 16.05.2025.
More information | Abstract | Links:
Invited contribution to the GLOBALCIT Forum “Citizenship as Reparations: Should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership?”
Global Citizenship Observatory, Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute. Visit: https://globalcit.eu/
Global Citizenship Observatory, Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute. Visit: https://globalcit.eu/
@online{nokey,
title = {Citizenship Restitution as (Disguised) Selective Immigration Policy},
author = {Reinhard Schweitzer and Tina Magazzini},
editor = {David Owen and Rainer Bauböck},
url = {https://globalcit.eu/citizenship-as-reparations-should-the-victims-of-historical-injustice-be-offered-membership/9/, Read online},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-05-16},
urldate = {2025-05-16},
institution = {Global Citizenship Observatory, Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute.},
abstract = {The central question posed by David Owen and Rainer Bauböck in the kickoff for this forum is whether citizenship is an appropriate form of reparation for historical injustice, and whether it should be offered not only to the victims themselves but also their descendants. The very varied and nuanced responses that their piece has triggered so far suggest that it is difficult to answer this question with a simple yes or no. In our contribution to this debate, we want to take a step back and ask whether the states that are framing citizenship offers in terms of reparation might instead – or in addition – be trying to attract desirable immigrants.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {online}
}
The central question posed by David Owen and Rainer Bauböck in the kickoff for this forum is whether citizenship is an appropriate form of reparation for historical injustice, and whether it should be offered not only to the victims themselves but also their descendants. The very varied and nuanced responses that their piece has triggered so far suggest that it is difficult to answer this question with a simple yes or no. In our contribution to this debate, we want to take a step back and ask whether the states that are framing citizenship offers in terms of reparation might instead – or in addition – be trying to attract desirable immigrants.
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