Key facts
Full title: Unmaking the past, making the future: An intergenerational analysis of ancestral citizenship and visions of Europe
Short title: Ancestral Citizenship Acquisition in Europe (ACE)
Project lead: Dr Zeynep Kaşlı
Geographic regions: Bulgaria, Germany, Italy
Project period: June 2024-June 2027
Key words: ancestral citizenship, generational differences, mobility/migrations, European citizenship, kin-states, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, intersectional approach
- What do ancestral ties/access to citizenship have to do with European belonging?
- How do conceptions of Europe and Europeanness differ and alter across generations of Europeans?
- How do these transformations shape and reveal the future of European citizenship, and mobility pathways?
This project explores ancestral citizenship pathways in Germany, Bulgaria and Italy focusing on access to European citizenship through claims of co-ethnicity and bloodline. These pathways, developed or reintroduced in response to historical trauma, shifting borders and economic hardships, aim to address national wrongdoings, offer reparations and compensate for past losses. By granting citizenship through ancestral ties, these countries navigate the balance between national and postnational identities, reshaping European belonging and justice.
Through a mixed-methods approach, the project examines three levels.
- At the macro level, it analyzes political justifications in Bulgarian, Italian, German and EU parliamentary debates for granting or restricting ancestral citizenship.
- At the micro level, it draws on interviews with citizenship-holders across generations, revealing motivations such as intergenerational healing, reconnection to ancestral places and leveraging EU mobility.
- At the meso level, it investigates the role of brokers and mediators facilitating these pathways.
The study uncovers the interplay between individual and political discourses, extending understanding of ancestral citizenship as a mechanism of historical reparation, return and identity reconstruction, while shaping Europe’s evolving framework of justice and belonging.
Why is this project relevant?
ACE is highly relevant in terms of the representations and uses of European citizenship on one hand, and the future of European societies’ demographics in an aging and polarizing Europe, on the other.
Its intergenerational approach to present visions of ancestry and citizenship, of both different nations and Europe, is particularly important for future imaginaries of Europe and European citizenship, and their various interconnected histories with peoples and communities outside of Europe.
Ancestral citizenship acquisition also requires careful scrutiny as an alternative pathway to citizenship at a time when legal pathways for entry to and stay in Europe are very much contested but the need for migrant workers is so acute.
As such, this project is highly relevant not only for the EU and national level policy makers but also for civil society organizations, think tanks and activists that are advocating for fair and safe migration routes, in other words mobility justice, for all, as well as for equal access to basic rights and legal protections for all who live in Europe.
Project aims
The main objective is to understand how extraterritorial access to ancestral citizenship (re)shapes the making of Europe across different generations of kin-citizens born outside the EU.
On the one hand, the project aims to identify why and how this pathway has emerged on the so-called supply side and, on the other hand, to detect who the ancestral citizens are on the demand side, and why they are interested in acquiring ancestral citizenship. This will allow us to uncover two potential gaps:
- between European and national debates on the future and vision of European citizenship as well as legislative priorities and goals;
- between the motivations of the states that supply citizenship over time and of those who seek to acquire citizenship, with an eye on the role of different generations as well as social markers such as education level, religion, gender, race and ethnicity, which often operate as intersecting structures of inequality.
Research team
- Dr Zeynep Kaşlı, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
- Dr Marhabo Saparova (ISS)
- Dr Zeynep Yanaşmayan (DeZiM)
- Dr Jonna Rock (DeZiM)
- Dr Jannes Jacobsen (DeZiM)
- Simona Maue (DeZiM)
- Stefana- Maria Vizman (DeZiM)
- Dr Melissa Blanchard (CNRS)
- Dr Thales Speroni (CNRS)
Why is this research important?
Citizenship is the fundamental legal bond that affirms membership within a sovereign state. Even though the role of citizenship as an identity marker is disputed, its potency as a legal status remains intact.
While there is an ongoing debate on whether or not access to citizenship across Europe has converged, scholars have noted trends of deethnicization and liberalization (Joppke 2003; Schmid 2022).
Ancestral citizenship acquisition, broadly perceived as transmission of citizenship to people born outside of the national territory, seemingly contradicts these trends. Particularistic regulations of ancestral linkage that prioritizes jus sanguinis (when a child's citizenship is determined by it's parent's citizenship) over jus soli (when a child's citizenship is determined by its place of birth), are part of citizenship regimes in all EU member states, even though substantially more attention has been paid to the Central, Eastern and South-eastern European states (Kim 2019; Pogonyi 2019).
Moritz (2015) identifies two legal routes that allow persons abroad to acquire the citizenship of a kin-state.
The first route addresses co-ethnic populations that in the current world order remained outside of the national territory due to changing economic and political circumstances.
The second route targets populations who were pushed out of national territories due the wrongdoings of the kin-state.
While some states, such as Germany, regulate these two routes distinctly, others, such as Italy and Bulgaria, rather use a generous application of citizenship transmission abroad to several generations to approach both populations. Scholars have also underlined how particularistic forms of citizenship based on ethnicity, among others, are on the rise and have been mirroring diverse visions of Europe (Sredanovic and Stadlmair 2018).
