Citizenship as reparations: should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership?

Owen, David and Bauböck, Rainer (2025) Citizenship as reparations: should the victims of historical injustice be offered membership? European University Institute

Abstract

A growing number of states have adopted “reparative citizenship” laws. This forum discusses the normative justification and problematic implications of such policies. In their initial essay, David Owen and Rainer Bauböck describe the phenomenon as the offer of citizenship status acquired by declaration or entitlement for persons who live permanently outside the state’s territory and are the descendants of persons who have lost their citizenship or similar membership status and could not pass it on to a next generation under conditions for which the current state bears responsibility and for which it accepts remedial duties. These include state perpetrated mass killings, persecutions or expulsions, a loss of parts of the state’s territory through secession, partition or annexation by another state, and discriminatory past citizenship laws that deprived certain groups of their citizenship status who would be entitled to this status under current legislation. A fourth context is that of reparations for colonialism and slavery where, however, it is generally not the perpetrator states that have offered citizenship as a compensation. 19 authors offer responses and further reflections on reparative citizenship, with some of them widening the scope of the phenomenon to include e.g. voluntary noncitizenship as a reparation for indigenous peoples (Kane and Lenard), and reparative citizenship for stateless people in situ (Sperfeld). Many authors are sceptical that citizenship reparations are normatively required (Erez) and regard such policies as exemplifying a broader trend towards devaluing citizenship (Spiro), or see them as driven by state efforts of nation-building and nationbranding (Aragoneses, Pogonyi) and selective immigration policies (Schweitzer and Magazzini). For Jelena Dzankic, they are not only selective, but also transactional and dangerous. Several contributions draw general lessons from discussing specific cases, such as Britain’s postimperial citizenship and immigration policies (Jacob-Owens), New Zealand citizenship for Samoans (Aithal, Cook, Lloydd and Sardelic), Namibian citizenship for Herero and Nama displaced by the genocide committed by German colonizers (Manby) and citizenship reparations for past gender discrimination in ius sanguinis transmissions (Mantha-Hollands, Blanchard). Bauböck and Owen conclude the debate with a rejoinder in which they defend the view that realist analyses of state motives do not preclude that under certain conditions reparative citizenship policies might still be defensible or even required.

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Contributors

Author: David Owen

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