Perspectives on the implementation gap in citizenship policy

Citizenship laws and policies define the characteristics of membership in the political community: what qualities define the people constituting the state and how membership can be transmitted over generations-but also acquired, lost and proven.These definitions usually appear in the highest-or, in the legal understanding of some countries, most 'basic'-state norms: constitutions and covering laws.The terms used to define citizenship at this level are usually abstract principles, setting the tone for a wide range of administrative practices related to the exercise of political rights and the acquisition or loss of nationality.Citizenship and nationality laws are typically shielded from fleeting political changes: located at the highest levels of the hierarchy of norms, they usually are protected by procedures requiring strong majorities and consensus-building to change 1 .Yet, below this level, a vast, fascinating, and complex variation unfolds when it comes to how citizenship policies are applied.Citizenship policy is not only an area of norms, but quintessentially of practice.Rather than the abstract principles, it is their concrete administrative translation that determines migrants' prospects to become members (nationals), and/ or active participants of the polity (citizens).In this Article Collection, political scientists, sociologists, lawyers and anthropologists study how the definition of and access to citizenship on paper differ from its application in practice: the implementation gaps in citizenship policy.For comparative migration studies, the importance of implementation gaps in citizenship policy can hardly be underestimated.Citizenship policy is not only the area of policy that reaches into the very constitution of a political community, establishing conditions for belonging and exercising rights in that community.It is also central to the myriad policies that determine rights and obligations for migrant persons because it establishes the conditions under which emigrants can keep their citizen rights and formal membership despite living abroad or taking up another nationality, and of course, those under which non-citizen immigrants can be granted certain rights traditionally reserved to citizens.Importantly, citizenship policy also defines how migrants cease to 1 For a debate on why the distinction between citizenship and nationality matters and is a formal distinction carrying legal consequences in various states and regions of the world, see Pedroza 2019 (21-24) Comparative Migration Studies