Family migration policy, once basing citizens and resident foreigners’ possibilities to bring in foreign family members mainly on the right to family life, is increasingly a tool states use to limit immigration and to push newcomers to integrate into civic and economic life. The family migration policies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden range widely – from more minimal support and age requirements to high expectations of language skills, work records and even income levels. While in Denmark and increasingly in Norway growing sets of requirements have been justified on the need to protect the welfare state and a Nordic liberal way of life, in Sweden more minimal requirements have been introduced in the name of spurring immigrants’ labor market integration even as rights-based reasoning has continued to dominate. In all three countries, new restrictions have been introduced in the wake of the refugee crisis. These cases show how prioritizations of the right to family life vis-à-vis welfare-state sustainability have produced different rules for family entry, and how family migration policies are used to different extents to push civic integration of both new and already settled immigrants.

With rising requirements for citizenship across Western Europe, Denmark is one of the restrictive 'leaders,' with tough rules for language ability, economic selfsupport, and a clean criminal record. But what do these restrictions mean for newcomers' ability to qualify, and how does this differ between different types of immigrants? Using register data on refugees and family migrants who immigrated to Denmark between 2001 and 2009, we show that tough language requirements exclude more people than self-support and crime rules, and many cannot qualify even after 13 years in the country. Across groups, education level at entry is the biggest predictor of whether and when newcomers qualify. These findings raise questions about the liberal nature of such requirements and about the future of democratic inclusion in Western Europe.

The literature on citizenship policies is flourishing, yet we know little of which naturalisation requirements majorities and minorities find reasonable, and how they view existing citizenship regimes. Drawing on original survey data with young adults in Norway (N = 3535), comprising immigrants and descendants with origins from Iraq, Pakistan, Poland, Somalia and Turkey, as well as a nonimmigrant majority group, this article examines whether perceptions of ideal citizenship criteria and assessments of Norway's current rules differ between groups. In terms of ideal citizenship criteria, we find a striking similarity across groups when looking at six different dimensions of citizenship policy. When merged into an index and estimated in a multivariate regression model, we find that both immigrants and descendants are significantly more liberal than natives are, yet the differences are small. When assessing the semi-strict citizenship regime in Norway, we find that immigrants are significantly more positive towards the current rules than natives. The results lend little support to recent work on 'strategic' and 'instrumental' citizenship and point instead to a close to universal conception of the terms of membership acquisition in Norway. This suggests that states may operate with moderate integration requirements while maintaining the legitimacy of the citizenship institution.

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Danmark har nogle af de mest restriktive statsborgerskabsregler i Europa med krav om blandt andet langt ophold, sprog, viden, selvforsørgelse og kriminalitet. Statsborgerskab giver stemme- og opstillingsret til nationale valg og er dermed forudsætningen for fuld demokratisk inklusion. I dag står godt 376.000 voksne indbyggere uden statsborgerskab. På baggrund af registerdata undersøger vi, hvorvidt flygtninge, som indvandrede som voksne mellem 2001 og 2009, har kunnet opfylde kravene til sprog, selvforsørgelse og kriminalitet. Vi undersøger, hvilke krav der er mest ekskluderende, og hvor stor en forskel det ville gøre, hvis kravene lempedes. Herudover undersøges, hvor mange danske statsborgere med dansk oprindelse faktisk kan leve op til de gældende krav. Med det som udgangspunkt diskuterer vi kravenes implikationer for det danske demokrati, og hvorvidt det svarer til normative forestillinger om fairness.