‘Changing teams’: a participant perspective on citizenship ceremonies

Hagelund, Anniken; Reegård, Kaja

doi:10.1080/13621025.2011.600087

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The ceremony has no legal function, and participation is voluntary. However, those who participate must pledge an oath of allegiance to the Norwegian state (Hagelund and Reegård 2011).…”

Section: The Norwegian Citizenship Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessments of citizenship criteria: are immigrants more liberal?

Midtbøen

Brochmann

Erdal

et al. 2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…The ceremony has no legal function, and participation is voluntary. However, those who participate must pledge an oath of allegiance to the Norwegian state (Hagelund and Reegård 2011).…”

Section: The Norwegian Citizenship Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessments of citizenship criteria: are immigrants more liberal?

Midtbøen

Brochmann

Erdal

et al. 2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…); that quality depends to a great extent on the 'stagecraft' employed by the organizers as well as the speeches delivered by officials. Interviews with new citizens in Norway revealed positive views about their experiences with ceremonies there, a finding that Hagelund and Reeg˚ard (2011) attribute in part to the voluntary nature of the ceremonies. Similar research in the UK by Byrne (2014) suggests a more negative view: officials leading ceremonies in the UK often speak about Britain's long history of 'welcoming' immigrants, and many of Byrne's respondents felt by contrast that Britain had not constituted a welcoming atmosphere for them.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the UK ‘citizenship process’ lead immigrants to reject British identity? A panel data analysis

Bartram

2020

Ethnicities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In societies where solidarity and cohesion are experienced primarily via shared national identity, immigration raises questions regarding how non-nationals can gain social membership, so that they are not perceived as undermining solidarity and cohesion. A key aspect of immigrants’ experiences is thus whether they embrace the national identity of the destination country. Governments in many destination countries increasingly seek to ensure that they do, via policy initiatives that impose specific requirements for gaining legal citizenship: applicants for naturalization are commonly required to pass a test (ensuring sufficient knowledge of e.g. ‘life in the UK’) and attend a ceremony that includes a pledge of loyalty. This paper considers whether the British version of these requirements is effective in leading immigrants to embrace British national identity. It uses data drawn from the UK household panel survey (‘Understanding Society’) to facilitate a comparison between those immigrants who become citizens and those who do not. The main finding is that those who become citizens significantly increase their attachment to British identity. Whether they do so specifically because of the policy requirements (the test and ceremony) is debatable, but it seems clear that these requirements do not inhibit development of a sense of Britishness among the immigrants who meet them.

show abstract

“…While the citizenship institution formally illustrates the symbolic membership in the political community the reality is often more complex. As the literature on naturalisation demonstrates, becoming a citizen, is not necessarily the same as becoming one of 'us', or a national, in a fully-fledged sense (Birkvad 2019;Damsholt 2008;Hagelund and Reegård 2011).…”

Section: Theorising the Passportmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Birthplace unknown’: on the symbolic value of the passport for identity-construction among naturalised citizens

Erdal

Midtbøen

2021

Identities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When naturalised citizens receive their passport, it is material and symbolic proof of membership in the nation-state, tying the individual to the nation and providing mobility resources. For naturalised Norwegian citizens, their birthplace appears in the passport. What might be the implications of removing this information? In 2016, the Norwegian government replaced birthplace details with 'birthplace unknown' in the passports of naturalised citizens from 31 Asian and African countries. Drawing on this case and 41 in-depth interviews with people of different citizenship-statuses, we analyse the role of the passport and birthplace information in it for naturalised citizens' identity-construction. The procedural change led to an experience of devalued citizenship in practical, emotional, and symbolic ways, by those directly affected and others, showing the precariousness of identity for naturalised citizens. We find that the passport matters for identity-construction, as a symbol of national belonging, and suggests more-than-instrumental approaches to citizenship among immigrant populations.

show abstract

‘Changing teams’: a participant perspective on citizenship ceremonies

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Assessments of citizenship criteria: are immigrants more liberal?

Assessments of citizenship criteria: are immigrants more liberal?

Does the UK ‘citizenship process’ lead immigrants to reject British identity? A panel data analysis

‘Birthplace unknown’: on the symbolic value of the passport for identity-construction among naturalised citizens

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About