Republican requirements for access to citizenship

Abstract

This chapter considers from a republican perspective the legitimate conditions for naturalization. If citizenship is understood as membership in a self-governing community, some boundaries are justified. But citizenship may be acquired almost automatically by dint of long-term residence. Nonetheless, republican citizenship is quite demanding: it requires a capacity to communicate, an awareness of interdependence among citizens, a sense of responsibility to the wider society and an inclination to engage deliberatively with others in public debate. On a republican view, the state may promote these through civic education for all citizens, and may require language classes and participation in certain practical political exercises for applicants for citizenship. But the requirement that applicants achieve fixed standards in tests of knowledge, skills or values is not desirable. Few conditions not required of native born citizens should be required of those naturalizing, and these should be more a matter of participation than of skills or identity.