Denationalized Kinship vs Nationalistic Ends? Attitudes and political intercrossing of Jewish Israeli bi-nationals in Romania and Hungary

Kinship can be conceptualized as a web of social relationships that forms an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies. In democratic societies the classical origins of nationalism, e.g., blood, religion and language, have been overcome by promoting universal citizenship and individual rights. Sense of belonging, (self-) attribution and identification are thus linked to the engaging pact between citizens and state. Democratic rights and social functions are supposedly guaranteed to citizens with neither prejudice, nor structural discrimination. However, what are the interactions when there are individual citizens whose citizenship is a result of choice, even in an instrumental fashion, rather than the nativist belonging to a determined community by birth? The paper analyses the case study of Israelis who are "bi-nationals", having double citizenship from Romania and Hungary. The two European countries permit and legally facilitate the acquisition of citizenship via re-naturalization from those who descend from their historical Jewish communities. In this sense governments’ policies inter-cross the recovery of Jewish life after the Holocaust and decades of Communism (which still reveal phenomena of racism and xenophobia), as well as fiscal and geopolitical interests. In other words, whereas state authorities use the granting of citizenship and political rights to Israelis in the perspective of political gain, new citizens might consider the choice of becoming Romanian or Hungarian as cultural re-appropriation, the useful attainment of EU Schengen passports, or as a revindication of what has been historically lost. The paper unpacks the concepts of citizenship and kinship by showing the top-down and bottom-up interests characterizing the political and international stakes surrounding the phenomenon of double citizenship in the intricated context of democratic fragility and instrumental political action. Commonplaces, particularistic motivations and general attitudes of those who obtain double citizenship from Romania and Hungary but who live in Israel and compared to those who politicize the phenomenon and translate it into their political attitude. The analysis uses qualitative methods such as process-tracing and interviews conducted to privileged informants around the practice of re-naturalization of citizenship, revealing motivations and generalizable meanings. Data are elaborated into different degrees of kinship, as shaped by both cultural heritage and utilitarianism. These are consequently exemplified and categorized as forms of institutional (legal) acknowledgment and situational sociopolitical significance.