The Politics of Naturalization in Europe, Asia, and North America

The Politics of Naturalization in Europe, Asia, and North America

UC San Diego. May 20, 2011.

The Weaver Conference Center.

How do liberal states make immigrants into nationals? For some observers, a postnational future beckons in which universal rights of personhood strip national identity of its relevance for claiming the rights of citizenship. According to others, transnational migrants can pick and choose their affiliations to multiple polities. For still others, differences between liberal states are becoming obsolete either because official multiculturalism renders the idea of national core cultures illegitimate or the universalistic qualities of liberalism strips states of their national distinction. Even among scholars of nationality and citizenship, the issue of making national difference is often elided by a focus on those features of nationality law that are converging across liberal states.

To what extent is there a convergence in naturalization policies among liberal states that receive large numbers of immigrants? What explains the variation or convergence?

The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, will host a conference to assess these questions on Friday, May 20, 2011. Funding is provided by a UCSD International, Comparative, and Area Studies (IIACAS) and Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) International Collaborative Research grant.

In order to RSVP for the event, please contact Ana Minvielle at aminvielle@ucsd.edu.


“The Politics of Naturalization in Europe, Asia, and North America”

May 20, 2011 at CCIS
9:30-10am

COFFEE AND WELCOME

David FitzGerald, UC San Diego
10am-Noon

PANEL 1: EUROPE

Maarten Vink, Universiteit Maastricht, on national variation in the EU

Sara Wallace Goodman, UCI, on citizenship tests in the EU

Alberto Martín Pérez, University of Barcelona

Discussant: Jon Fox, University of Bristol
Noon-1pm

LUNCH
1-2:30pm

PANEL 2: NORTH AMERICA

Hiroshi Motomura, UCLA, on the U.S. case

Catherine Dauvergne, University of British Columbia, on the Canadian case

Discussant: Irene Bloemraad, UC Berkeley
2:30-3pm

BREAK
3-4:30pm

PANEL 3: ASIA

Kamal Sadiq, UC Irvine

John Skrentny, UC San Diego

Discussant: Mara Loveman, University of Wisconsin