Fuzzy ideas about citizenship make it impossible to clearly argue immigration policy

We don’t know what citizenship means. Maybe it doesn’t even have a specific meaning. We want our arguments about citizenship to be objectively true or false, but we can’t even be clear about what we’re saying. A more precise, explicit understanding of citizenship is needed. Failing that, we could at least understand our differing views.

There are two different views on citizenship: a thin, minimalist view of citizenship, and a thick view of citizenship that sees it as an important part of one’s identity. They don’t perfectly correspond to left- and right-wing positions. Each side adopts parts of the thick view and parts of the thin view. That shouldn’t surprise you. Ideologies exist to motivate groups of people to cooperate, not to be consistent or rational.

You can think of these two views as a continuum. You don’t have to adopt extreme version of either view, and it’s possible to meet somewhere in the middle. The current political environment discourages that kind of compromise, but it’s hypothetically possible.

Flag burning, anthem sitting

You can see how people view citizenship through their reactions to attacks on the symbols of citizenship. Those with a thin view of citizenship will be unphased. It’s like saying “I hate my mobile carrier” – you’re not saying you hate everyone who works there, or that you think it’s a force of evil that’s destroying the world. You’re simply expressing displeasure with a service you were entitled to.

Those with a thicker view of citizenship will take it more seriously. They see their citizenship as a more meaningful part of their identity. If you burn a flag, to them it’s like burning a Bible or Koran, or making racist remarks about groups of people.  They won’t see it simply as a complaint that you aren’t getting what you’re entitled to, they see it as an attack on the people who make up that group.

Think of the controversial protest by Nike spokesman Colin Kaepernick. When he sat or kneeled during the anthem and said that it was because he didn’t want to show pride in the country, it split people into two camps.

One camp thought it was perfectly reasonable for Kaepernick to complain that he, and people like him, weren’t receiving the treatment they deserved. The other camp saw Kaepernick as insulting them (and their family, friends, and all other American citizens) even though they had done nothing wrong. He had become wildly successful because of this group, and now he was betraying it.

The first camp saw it as a perfectly justifiable reaction, like tearing up your membership card to a gym because you found out the gym had been shafting you on fees. The second saw it as extreme hostility, like burning a Koran because a radical minority of Muslims commit terrorist attacks.

There’s no objectively correct way to interpret Kaepernick’s actions because citizenship can mean different things.

Thick citizenship

An old view of citizenship sees a citizen as a special type of person who has powers and responsibilities in their community. Citizenship doesn’t just mean that citizens can make demands of their community, but that the community makes demands of them. While, in practice, there are irresponsible and selfish citizens, the ideal citizens are far-sighted leaders. I’m calling this “thick citizenship” but it’s also called “civic republicanism.”

Ancient Athenian democracy is the archetypical model of this kind of citizenship. Citizens (limited to a portion of adult males) were both the members of the group and its rulers. They had power and responsibility. They made the laws and obeyed them; they were free but forced to join the military to defend their freedom.

This kind of citizenship mostly fell out of favor with the rise of liberal democracy, as it involves a group making demands on the individual, and it puts some classes of individuals above others. There are still traces of it in our view of voting as a sacred duty, our obligations to answer the draft or jury duty, in President Kennedy’s famous demand to “ask what we can do for our country,” and, in places such as Australia, a legal requirement to vote.

Thick citizenship treats citizenship as an important part of one’s identity, perhaps on the same level as religion or ideology. It’s a group of people that you share a special bond with and you’re expected to watch out for each other’s interests against an adversarial outside world. It doesn’t force you to treat non-citizens poorly, but it does require you to treat fellow citizens better, just as you’d (hopefully) treat friends and family better than strangers.

Advantages

Thick citizenship can create feelings of cohesion and unity. People are forced to take part in their community and bear responsibility for what happens. There’s no “don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy.”

A closer connection between citizen and state would make it harder to profit off spreading false information, e.g. conspiracy theories, about the state. Figures who make a living spreading unjustified distrust (Alex Jones) would be a little bit poorer

Stronger group identity could reduce infighting and mistrust. Even when you strongly disagree with your family, you don’t think they’re Nazi communists out to destroy you. That level of trust makes debate possible, which in turn improves the quality of our ideas. In a mistrustful environment, we can’t effectively fact check our rivals, because fact checking is dismissed as covert propaganda.

Disadvantages

There are disadvantages, as well, which is part of why thick citizenship fell out of favor. We Westerners are strongly opposed to society making demands on individuals. Our individualistic, rights-based view of government has succeeded for the past few centuries. We don’t want to change it now.

Thick citizenship’s also exclusionary. By making citizenship so demanding, it creates a second class of people who aren’t willing or able to act as citizens. Perhaps they can’t do the required community service, or vote, or do whatever else is demanded of them. Perhaps they simply feel alienated and refuse to act as a citizen for their polity. Should  you count them as non-citizens, or second-class citizens, or punish them, or simply let citizenship collapse into something without demands? There are no good options.

Political relevance

The left-wing uses a thick version of citizenship when describing what we owe to needy citizens. Without a thick view of citizenship, policies like “Medicare for all” would be unjustifiable. Saving the life of an American is much more expensive than saving the life of someone starving in a poor country. If we don’t have special obligations to other Americans, we have no excuse for spending money saving one American instead of saving ten non-Americans.

The right uses a thick view of citizenship more frequently. Their outrage at perceived betrayals towards America (by, for example, protesting the national anthem or burning the flag) reflects a view of citizenship as a community with shared norms and standards. Violating these standards is wrong. The “America, love it or leave it” attitude also reflects the belief that American citizenship shouldn’t be seen merely as a perk but as membership in a group.

Thin citizenship

The more modern, individualistic view of citizenship is that it’s a set of perks afforded to a citizen, ranging from rights to entitlements. This view gained popularity with the Western move towards liberal democracy in the 18^th century. There are minor responsibilities associated with this kind of citizenship, such as a duty to obey the laws and defend the polity, but for the most part it’s a boon. Some don’t even believe these duties are necessary, and that citizens should ignore laws they don’t agree with and even dodge the draft if they’re so inclined.

Thin citizenship is popular with those who value diverse, pluralistic societies. Thicker views of citizenship require more agreement on social norms and a stronger sense of kinship. A society that has room for a devout Muslim, an orthodox Jew, and an outspoken atheist will have difficulty sustaining a strong common identity – and might demand those groups to sacrifice treasured parts of their individual group identities.

Advantages

This view has advantages. It’s very empowering for citizens, though historically this empowering citizenship was limited to a small slice of population. Thin-citizenship governments can’t usually force citizens to act. That kind of freedom lets people live as they wish to.

The relaxed attitude towards cultural differences allows more sub-cultures and different perspectives to thrive, while the mainstream culture and perspective weakens. The social bond of citizenship loosens.

When there’s a weaker common bond between citizens, there are weaker mass reactions against threatening ideas. While that can allow for awful changes to take place, such as the obvious example of the Nazi regime emerging from the chaos of the Weimar Republic, it can also allow for revolutionary positive changes to take place, such as women’s liberation and equality between ethnic groups.

Disadvantages

There are disadvantages. Because thin citizenship is seen as an entitlement rather than a responsibility, every time its benefits are increased, it creates a new minimum. People will demand that minimum, in good times and bad, without offering anything in return. Unless there’s unlimited economic growth, the amount being demanded will eventually exceed the amount society can supply.

This happened in Western countries until the ’70s, as their governments’ control of the economy grew past the 50% mark. Then right-wing reactions cut benefits and shrank the state down to 30-40% of the economy.

This type of citizenship can be quite unfair, as well. It’s a package of invaluable benefits given to people who happen to be born in a certain time and place- or, maybe, were able to move there. It makes the birth-lottery even less fair. Residents of a rich society will always have unfairly good opportunities, but at least those opportunities require them to do something.

Political relevance

The left-wing tends to adopt the thin version of citizenship when it comes to immigration restrictions, responsibilities of citizenship, and attachment to national symbolism. Citizenship is just a nice entitlement that we should grant to other people and not treat as sacred.

The right-wing uses a thin view of citizenship regarding what we owe other citizens. Just because a needy person happens to be born nearby (or moved here) doesn’t mean we’re obligated to do anything for them. Let voluntary donations by their friends, family, and community handle that.

A consistently thin view would oppose borders and nationalism, but also be skeptical of the social safety net. Welfare programs would be supported only in terms of cost-benefit, with assistance given to able-bodied workers who could pay it back. This view is a kind of libertarianism; in most of Europe it would simply be called liberalism, as that word has different connotations than in America.

Postnationalism

There are some who dream of moving ‘beyond’ thin citizenship, into global citizenship. This kind of postnational citizenship squeezes out national identities by creating a thin global citizenship with a commitment to (supposedly) universal human values and deference to subnational identities, such as racial or religious groups, particularly minority groups.

This dream has several problems. First, the definition of a protected minority would be set by the whims of social trends and those in power. For example, Asian-Americans live longer, healthier lives than the average for America, as well as making roughly 50% more money, but wouldlikely receive special consideration under a postnational citizenship regime. Americans descended from the French make less money than average and have done so for generations. They would not receive special protection. They’re tossed into the majority “white” category that would have a weaker legal status than protected groups.

Second, multinational identities have a poor track record. The USSR collapsed into national pieces as soon as its government had to reduce spending. The EU has never been able to create a pan-European identity and may be entering a tailspin. The second half of the 20^th century saw failed attempts to create pan-Arab and pan-African identities.

The mistake postnationalists make is thinking that nationalism too small and closed-off an identity and we can build something broader. More often than not, nations are too broad of an identity for human nature and are difficult or impossible to maintain. Empires are even harder, and a global empire would be hardest of all.

Immigration, naturalization, and natural-born citizens

How does this help us resolve the immigration debate? It can help us see where we, and our opponents, are being inconsistent. That may not be a problem: consistency is anathema to politics. If you would rather have a clear view of immigration than be popular, though, this will help.

The thicker we view citizenship, the more benefits we extend to citizens and the more we demand of them. The current American model puts high demands on immigrants to become citizens, but very low demands for American-born people to be citizens. We practice jus soli, granting citizenship to anyone born on US soil.

That puts us in an odd place. Naturalized immigrants have demonstrated a high level of commitment to the American community and would meet the criteria of thick citizenship. Natural-born citizens and non-citizens haven’t necessarily bought-in to American citizenship to the same degree.

Jus soli is based on the implicit assumption that people born and raised in the US will have a minimum level of respect for, and understanding of, the US and what citizenship entails. If that assumption is wrong, we need a thinner view of citizenship.

If citizens don’t share norms, or feel attachment to a shared community, or fulfill any special duties as a citizen, then it would be a mistake to treat them substantially differently than non-citizens. That would mean weaker rights and privileges for American citizens. It would be very difficult to justify welfare programs that benefit US citizens if US citizenship meant nothing – that money could be spent far more efficiently helping people in poor countries.

It would also mean easier immigration and naturalization. Paradoxically, it would also mean less concern for the current migrant crisis and similar situations. The people in border camps are better off than other suffering people in the world, so there’s no reason to prioritize their well-being simply because they’re on American soil. It would be more important to pressure Kim Jung Un over suffering North Koreans than Donald Trump over suffering migrants.

If we prefer thicker citizenship, and its benefits in welfare and trust, then we must demand more from our citizens. It can’t simply be a perk that anyone can be born into. There would also have to be greater social sanctions on Americans who attack the community. A high level of mutual trust can’t be sustained when citizens always feel threatened by each other.

Only by understanding the trade-offs between thick and thin citizenship can we reach a compromise on what citizenship should mean. If we switch between views when it’s politically convenient then our rivals will do the same and our problems will be intractable.