Dual Citizenship

From Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Alix Ohlin comes an intimate and compelling novel of motherhood, love, a search for belonging, and what it means to be a sister. All her life, Lark Brossard felt invisible, overshadowed by the people around her: first by her temperamental mother; then by her sister, Robin, a brilliant pianist as wild as the animals she loves; and finally by Lawrence Wheelock, a filmmaker who is both Lark’s employer and her occasional lover. When Wheelock denies her what she longs for most — a child — Lark is forced to re-examine a life marked by unrealized ambitions and thwarted desires. As she takes charge of her destiny, Lark comes to rely on Robin in ways she never could have imagined. In this meditation on motherhood, sisterhood, desire, and self-knowledge, Alix Ohlin traces the rich and complex path towards fulfillment as an artist and as a human being.

Based on rich oral histories, this is an engaging study of citizenship construction and practice in Liberia, Africa's first black republic.

"Examining an important, rising trend in today's global system, Citizenship 2.0 does us a fine service in exploring the origins and consequences of the dual citizenship phenomenon."--Alejandro Portes, Princeton University.sity.

Read Peter's Op-ed on Trump's Immigration Ban in The New York Times The rise of dual citizenship could hardly have been imaginable to a time traveler from a hundred or even fifty years ago. Dual nationality was once considered an offense to nature, an abomination on the order of bigamy. It was the stuff of titanic battles between the United States and European sovereigns. As those conflicts dissipated, dual citizenship continued to be an oddity, a condition that, if not quite freakish, was nonetheless vaguely disreputable, a status one could hold but not advertise. Even today, some Americans mistakenly understand dual citizenship to somehow be “illegal”, when in fact it is completely tolerated. Only recently has the status largely shed the opprobrium to which it was once attached. At Home in Two Countries charts the history of dual citizenship from strong disfavor to general acceptance. The status has touched many; there are few Americans who do not have someone in their past or present who has held the status, if only unknowingly. The history reflects on the course of the state as an institution at the level of the individual. The state was once a jealous institution, justifiably demanding an exclusive relationship with its members. Today, the state lacks both the capacity and the incentive to suppress the status as citizenship becomes more like other forms of membership. Dual citizenship allows many to formalize sentimental attachments. For others, it’s a new way to game the international system. This book explains why dual citizenship was once so reviled, why it is a fact of life after globalization, and why it should be embraced today.

The increased emergence of dual and multiple nationality in our globalized world has recently led to public and scholarly debates on a number of resulting practical questions. This book comprehensively evaluates the legal status of dual nationals on the basis of a comparative analysis, with emphasis on practice and law in the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, Turkey and other selected countries, comprising contributions of both academics and practitioners. Among the legal subjects examined more intensively are the exercise of political rights by dual nationals, including voting and office holding, performance of military service, loss and withdrawal of citizenship, and effects of dual nationality on judicial cooperation, as well as aspects of private international law. The authors pay attention to developmental trends and legal changes in various countries, and also to the philosophical and theoretical perspectives underlying various practices. Specific recommendations for states dealing with dual nationality complete the investigation.

Sovereign states have increasingly tolerated dual citizenship. This is surprising considering that, until recently, citizenship and political loyalty to a state were still considered inseparable. In an age of increasing transnational insecurity, questions of loyalty to the nation state have gained renewed prominence. The contributions to this volume examine the idea that increasing tolerance towards dual citizenship is a test case for the growing liberalization of citizenship law in liberal and emerging democracies.