Controversies over Citizenship: Examining the Political Discourse of Deprivation of Citizenship and Its Impact on Migrants’ Self-Perception as ‘Co-citizens’

In recent years, the citizenship of people with a migration background in Western Europe has been at the centre of heated debates. Various political actors, led by right-wing populist politicians, have generally advocated depriving the citizenship of migrant-origin residents who have strong political ties to their country of origin. This controversy has been fuelled by the mobilisation of many Turkish migrants in Western Europe for elections in Turkey in the last years. Right-wing populist parties have been able to influence political discourse and mainstream an anti-liberal narrative on the rights of migrants. An example of this effect surfaced when the Dutch Prime Minister of the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), Mark Rutte, placed the slogan ‘Act normal or go away!’ at the centre of his party’s political campaign during the 2017 general election, emphasising the expectation that migrants must adopt Dutch ‘habits’ and ‘values’ (Taylor 2017, 23 January). Similar statements are anything but rare in Germany as well. This proposed study aims to comprehensively understand the prevailing political rhetoric surrounding deprivation of citizenship and its impact on the sense of national belonging among migrants in the Netherlands and Germany. For this aim, it seeks an answer to the following question: "How does the political discourse on deprivation of citizenship impact migrant-origin residents’ perceptions on national belonging?" The scholarship of citizenship (e.g. Glick-Schiller 2001; Foner 2002; Bauböck 2003; Bloemraad 2006; Gidengil & Stolle 2009; Gebhardt 2016; Luthra et al. 2018; Labussière & Vink 2020; Vink 2021) emphasises the role of citizenship on the political identities of migrants. Since citizenship rights imply ‘the activation of the political self in the country of reception’ (Luthra et al. 2018: 182), naturalisation matters drastically for migrant-origin residents. Without citizenship, residents of migrant origin cannot perceive themselves as an integral component of the country where they live (Glick-Schiller & Fouron 2001: 25). Nevertheless, naturalisation alone is insufficient for immigrant political incorporation. The other vital aspect highlighted by Tonkens & Duyvendak (2016) is the sense of ‘full citizenship’ among migrants. The authors indicate that migrant-origin residents need to perceive that they are also ‘recognised symbolically and emotionally as co-citizens’ (Ibid: 1). The exclusionary discourse over the rights of migrants in the receiving country has, thus, strong implications for the self-perception of migrants as ‘co-citizens’ (Cinalli & Giugni 2011: 46). This study is designed as a comparative case study based on two countries that, for many years, pursued different policies of naturalisation. In doing so, it aims to analyse the political narratives over citizenship through the statements of receiving country politicians and shed light on how migrant-origin residents perceive this political discourse in context of national belonging. To this end, 43 semi-structured interviews with second-generation Turkish migrants in Germany and the Netherlands have been conducted. These interviews will be analysed through content analysis using MAXQDA software. The synthesis of these analyses will allow for a holistic comprehension of the interplay between the political rhetoric and the individual experiences.