The paper explores citizenship, its shifting boundaries and borderlines, and how the concept is being defined and redefined, used and constructed from the point of view of examining debates related to the rights of persons without the legal membership in a particular polity. While citizenship is closely linked to the access to rights, the matter of the rights of non-citizens, such as ’migrants’, ’undocumented immigrants’, or ’asylum seekers’ has gained more and more visibility in political agendas, as well as it has become a matter of wide academic interest. With particular focus on the right of asylum and the context of post World War II (West) Germany, the paper investigates how the rights of non-citizens are being disputed in different political and parliamentary arenas. Secondly, in addition to studying parliamentary debates as primary material, the aim is to make remarks on the discussions related to rights of those without the legal status of citizenship in academic literature, among contemporary political and legal theorists.
