Key Takeaways
1. Citizenship as a Fundamental Instrument of Social Closure
In global perspective, citizenship is a powerful instrument of social closure, shielding prosperous states from the migrant poor.
Bounded communities. Every modern state identifies a specific set of persons as its citizens, defining all others as noncitizens or aliens. This fundamental distinction creates bounded and exclusive citizenries, which are crucial in a world marked by vast economic and political disparities. Citizenship acts as a gatekeeper, controlling access to a state's territory, labor market, and welfare benefits.
Territorial and personal. The state is not merely a territorial organization but also a membership organization. While territorial rule defines authority over a given space, citizenship defines who belongs to that state, granting unconditional rights of entry and residence to citizens, unlike noncitizens whose rights are always conditional. This dual nature of the state—territorial and personal—makes citizenship a vital mechanism for managing population flows and maintaining internal order.
Historical necessity. The institution of citizenship, with its clear rules for allocating persons to states, emerged from the imperatives of the modern state-system. In early 19th-century Germany, for instance, the need to coordinate expulsion practices among numerous small states led to the formal codification of state-membership, ensuring that every person belonged to one state and could be returned there if unwanted elsewhere. This formalized the distinction between members and non-members, making citizenship both an instrument and an object of closure.
2. France's State-Centered Nationhood Fosters Expansive Citizenship
French understandings of nationhood have been state-centered and assimilationist, German understandings ethnocultural and “differentialist.”
Nation as state creation. In France, the nation has historically been conceived in relation to the institutional and territorial frame of the state. This state-centered understanding means that national identity is seen as a product of political unity and shared institutions, rather than a pre-existing ethnic or cultural bond. Political inclusion has inherently entailed cultural assimilation, applying equally to regional minorities and immigrants.
Assimilationist ethos. This deeply rooted assimilationist self-understanding views French culture as something that can be acquired, not just inherited. It presumes that individuals residing within France, especially those born and educated there, will naturally adopt French "mores, habits, and character." This confidence in the state's capacity to transform "strangers into citizens" has historically underpinned an expansive definition of citizenship.
Inclusive legal framework. Consequently, French citizenship law is expansive, particularly through its application of jus soli (right of soil). Birth and residence in France automatically transform second-generation immigrants into citizens, legally assimilating them to other French men and women. This contrasts sharply with countries where nationhood is defined primarily by descent, leading to significantly higher rates of civic incorporation for immigrants in France.
3. Germany's Ethnocultural Nationhood Leads to Restrictive Citizenship
If the French understanding of nationhood has been state-centered and assimilationist, the German understanding has been Volk-centered and differentialist.
Nation before state. Unlike France, German national feeling developed before the nation-state, leading to an idea of the nation not originally political, but as an organic cultural, linguistic, or racial community—a Volksgemeinschaft. On this understanding, nationhood is an ethnocultural fact, prior to and independent of the state.
Differentialist approach. This Volk-centered perspective fosters a "differentialist" self-understanding, which is less inclined to assimilate outsiders. It emphasizes the tenacious maintenance of distinctive ethnonational identities, particularly in zones of mixed populations, such as the historical German-Slav borderlands. This view makes it difficult to conceive of non-ethnic Germans becoming "German" in a deeper sense.
Restrictive legal framework. This ethnocultural understanding is embodied in a restrictive definition of citizenship, based almost exclusively on jus sanguinis (right of blood or descent). Birth in Germany has no bearing on German citizenship for non-ethnic Germans, and naturalization policies are historically more stringent. This results in a significantly lower rate of civic incorporation for non-German immigrants compared to France, while simultaneously being remarkably open to ethnic German immigrants from Eastern Europe.
4. The French Revolution Forged Modern National Citizenship
The Revolution, in short, invented both the nation-state and the modern institution and ideology of national citizenship.
Radical transformation. The French Revolution dramatically enriched and transformed the legal and political meaning of citizenship, occasioning the first formal codification of state-membership by a Western territorial state. It brought together the formal delimitation of the citizenry, the establishment of civil equality, the institutionalization of political rights, and the legal rationalization of the citizen/foreigner distinction.
Equality and sovereignty. As a bourgeois revolution, it swept away privilege, creating a class of persons enjoying common rights and obligations, formally equal before the law. As a democratic revolution, it institutionalized political rights as general citizenship rights, transposing them from the city-state to the nation-state. Crucially, it proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation, conceived in political, not ethnocultural, terms.
Cosmopolitanism to xenophobia. Initially, the Revolution was ostentatiously cosmopolitan, abolishing the droit d'aubaine and welcoming "pilgrims of liberty." However, driven by war and internal struggle, it quickly shifted to a xenophobic nationalism, singling out foreigners as paradigmatic outsiders. This invented the modern figure of the "foreigner" not just as a legal category, but as a political epithet, sharply bounding the "nation une et indivisible."
5. Prussian State-Building Laid Foundations for German Subjecthood
The emergence of clearly defined and sharply bounded citizenries in response to the imperatives of the modern state-system can be seen clearly in early-nineteenth-century Germany.
Predemocratic subjecthood. German citizenship followed a more tortuous path, with no single crystallizing event like the French Revolution. Early German state-membership, or "subject-hood" (Staatsangehörigkeit), developed in individual German states like Prussia, predating national citizenship and democratic ideals. This reflected the independent development of state-building, nationalism, and democracy in Germany.
Administrative unification. The Prussian state, through its commissarial bureaucracy, gradually transformed its territories from disparate jurisdictions into a unitary administrative field. This process, driven by military competition and the need for centralized taxation, brought all inhabitants into a direct relationship with the state, laying the groundwork for a general, abstract status of state-membership, albeit one still marked by ständisch (estate-based) inequalities.
Migration and external boundaries. The codification of state-membership in Prussia (1842) was primarily driven by the dynamics of the interstate system and the need to control the "migrant poor." With increased mobility after the breakup of the ständisch order, states sought to coordinate expulsion practices, leading to treaties that defined who "belonged" to a state. This formalized state-membership as an externally bounded status, distinct from mere residence, to shield states from unwanted migrants.
6. Republican Assimilationism Drove France's 1889 Jus Soli Expansion
The decisive extension of jus soli in 1889 can be explained only with reference to a distinctively state-centered and assimilationist understanding of nationhood, deeply rooted in political and cultural geography and powerfully reinforced in the 1880s by the Republican program of universal primary education and universal military service.
Political, not military imperative. While demographic and military concerns were present, the 1889 extension of jus soli to second-generation immigrants was primarily a response to ideological and political problems. Republicans resented the "shocking inequality" of long-settled foreigners being exempt from military service, especially as universal conscription became a core Republican ideal.
Fear of "nations within." Another key driver was the concern about the "incipient development of different nations within the French nation," particularly solidary Italian communities. The unitarist French political formula, intolerant of anything that could be interpreted as a "nation within the nation," sought to absorb these groups by transforming them into individual citizens.
Faith in assimilation. The solution—extending jus soli—was deemed acceptable due to a robust Republican faith in France's assimilatory powers. Institutions like the newly compulsory, secular, and nationalistic primary schools, and the universal military service, were seen as powerful engines capable of transforming "peasants into Frenchmen" and, by extension, native-born foreigners into French citizens, both socially and legally.
7. Wilhelmine Germany Consolidated Ethnocultural Jus Sanguinis
The new law marked the nationalization, even the ethnicization, of German citizenship.
Dual context of reform. The 1913 German citizenship law was shaped by two main factors: the desire to retain the loyalty of Auslandsdeutsche (ethnic Germans abroad) and the concern about the growing number of non-German immigrants, particularly Poles and Jews from the East. The law made citizenship more accessible to emigrants and their descendants, severing it from residence, and less accessible to immigrants.
Ethnonational concerns. The widespread support for including Auslandsdeutsche reflected a diffuse national pride, mixing statist and ethnocultural motifs, aiming to preserve "Germandom abroad." Simultaneously, the vehement rejection of jus soli for immigrants was rooted in ethnopolitical concerns about "Volksfremde" (ethnocultural foreigners) and the "Polonization" of eastern Prussian territories.
"No breakthrough of jus soli." Government and conservative parties vehemently opposed any introduction of jus soli, even for those born and raised in Germany, viewing it as an unacceptable "breakthrough" against the principle of jus sanguinis. This opposition was driven by a deep-seated ethnocultural understanding of nationhood, which saw the nation as a community of descent, and feared that territorial birthright would dilute the "German essence" of the Reich, especially given the perceived "flood" of Slavic and Jewish immigrants from the East.
8. Modern France Upholds Its Assimilationist Citizenship Tradition
The prevailing elite understanding of nationhood, while contested, remains more assimilationist in France than in Germany.
Challenge and resilience. In the mid-1980s, France's jus soli system faced an unprecedented challenge from the far-right National Front, which argued that "to be French, you have to deserve it." Concerns about dual citizenship, the "desacralization" of French identity, and the alleged unassimilability of North African Muslims fueled this critique.
Political costs of exclusion. Despite initial governmental attempts to restrict jus soli, the proposed reforms met with strong opposition from a broad coalition of political, civic, and moral authorities. The government ultimately retreated, realizing the high political and cultural costs of an exclusionary stance, especially when framed against France's deeply rooted assimilationist tradition.
Enduring self-understanding. The prevailing French elite self-understanding remains state-centered and assimilationist. While the desirability and possibility of assimilation are debated, the idea of North African immigrants becoming French is still considered plausible and natural. This cultural idiom continues to engender an "ideal interest" in an inclusive citizenship law, making fundamental restrictive changes politically difficult.
9. Modern Germany Persists with Ethnocultural Citizenship Exclusion
The fact that Germany does not understand itself as a country of immigration for non-Germans leaves it ill-prepared to deal with its non-German settlers.
"No country of immigration." The enduring refrain "Wir sind kein Einwanderungsland" (we are not a country of immigration) reflects a core element of German national self-understanding. This norm, despite the undeniable reality of large-scale non-German settlement, implicitly means Germany is not a country for non-German immigration, distinguishing it from the welcomed influx of ethnic Germans.
Ethnocultural bias exposed. The massive post-1988 influx of ethnic Germans (Aussiedler) from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, who are automatically granted citizenship, starkly highlights the ethnocultural inflection of German citizenship law. This contrasts sharply with the continued civic exclusion of non-German immigrants, even second and third generations, who face restrictive naturalization rules and the absence of jus soli.
Limited reform. While the anomaly of settlement without citizenship is acknowledged, and naturalization rules were liberalized in 1990, these reforms are unlikely to significantly increase civic incorporation. The requirement to renounce original citizenship deters many, and the system of pure jus sanguinis remains untouched. The lack of a viable assimilationist tradition and the fear of "forced Germanization" make the French model of automatic civic incorporation unthinkable.
10. Citizenship Debates Are Primarily About National Identity
The politics of citizenship today is first and foremost a politics of nationhood. As such, it is a politics of identity, not a politics of interest (in the restricted, materialist sense).
Beyond material interests. Debates about citizenship law in both France and Germany are less about the material interests of the state or immigrants (as most immigrants already have secure residence and broad social rights) and more about symbolic stakes. Citizenship in a nation-state is deeply intertwined with nationhood and national identity, making reforms questions of "who is what?" rather than "who gets what?"
Clash of self-understandings. In France, the debate centers on whether becoming French is an "honor" requiring assimilation or an "automatic" right reflecting a long tradition of inclusion. In Germany, it revolves around whether the nation is fundamentally an ethnocultural Volksgemeinschaft or can accommodate non-ethnic Germans as citizens without requiring them to become "German" in a cultural sense.
Enduring traditions. These debates reveal the resilience of deeply rooted national self-understandings. French state-centered assimilationism and German ethnocultural differentialism continue to shape the "universe of debate" and limit the plausibility of fundamental changes to citizenship law. These traditions, imbued with normative dignity, make it politically costly to challenge the established ways of defining who belongs to the nation-state.
