Overcoming Citizenship: Six Practical Steps for Overcoming the Hierarchy of Nationality

Alan Hyde 

Rutgers University - School of Law
May 10, 2013

Rutgers School of Law-Newark Research Paper No. 125 
Abstract:      
The legal concept of citizenship is employed almost exclusively to justify differential treatment of otherwise identically-situated individuals. Legal interventions around the world attempt to mitigate this discrimination. The discriminatory aspects of citizenship may be substantially mitigated by a six-step program: avoid the word citizen; disaggregate its legal consequences; advance transnational human rights as a source of rights; proliferate multiple citizenship; replace naturalization oaths and ceremonies with automatic registration; and ultimately treat all remaining distinction between citizen and noncitizen as suspect, presumed driven by no policy other than hatred or ethnic superiority.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 21

Keywords: immigration and citizenship law, public international law, human rights,global economy

Full text avaiilable at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2263275