Citizenship issues have become subject of increasingly vivid debates since the beginning of the Nineties. The underlying principles of citizenship have been questioned by political theorists, sociologists, politicians and international organizations and their findings varied in focus, substance and consequence. This renewed interest in citizenship studies is due to transformations and developments affecting the political, social, and economic realms at different levels: global (increased economic interdependence, human rights revolution, end of geopolitical blocs, increasing migratory flows), regional (fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, European regional integration), and domestic (the crisis of post-modern democracies, the need for social …show more content…
With the support of data about the structure of citizenship regimes and naturalization procedures, I will demonstrate that, while in the Western context the spread of this phenomena is linked to rising migrant flows and the need of integrating permanent ‘alien’ citizens, in Eastern Europe the redefinition of citizenship regimes was part of the nation-building process. The acceptance of dual citizenship as well as privileged access to citizenship for co-ethnics was thus driven by the desire to strengthen ties with historical national minorities in the attempt of symbolically reconstructing the national ‘imagined community’, the consequence being a wide asymmetry in the process of acquisition of citizenship through naturalization between foreigners and persons of national extraction. Then I will focus on the specific case of Hungary, retracing the historical development of relations between the government and the Hungarian national minority with the aim of framing the historical and political background against which the granting of external dual citizenship can be viewed. Specifically, I will start by addressing the historical developments through which Hungarian nationalism evolved into an ethnic conception, including ethnic Hungarians beyond the border as an integral part of the national project, to finally demonstrate that the current governing party, Fidesz, following this tradition, modified the citizenship regime to grant external dual citizenship for reasons that transcend the objective of minority protection. To this aim, I will combine the analysis of relevant legislative provisions with Orban’s public declarations. Finally, I will argue that the granting of external dual citizenship to national minorities is not only undesirable for the political implications it carries, but also because it is not normatively defensible