Nationality And Statelessness And The Stateless

Jacob Levy’s article works to explore different areas of cultural rights and the ways in which we may change the way we do things depending on the minority culture of the community. He breaks down cultural rights into different categories: exemptions, assistance, self-government, external and internal rules, recognition/enforcement, representation, and symbolic claims. He gives certain examples about each category, with instances such as having multilingual ballots to ease the voting process for minorities (assistance) or having proper representation in the legislature process.

Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.

“Borders” by the author Thomas King exemplifies the classic political dispute of citizenship versus identity. “Borders” presents a story taking place between the Canadian-American borders, and featuring a thirteen-year-old boy that is also the narrator, along with his mother. Despite repeated attempts by the border guards, the mother declines to reveal her citizenship as being either Canadian or American; instead, she insists that she is Blackfoot. Due to her lack of cooperation, she and her thirteen-years-old child remain between the borders of Canada and America. Springing from the desire to conceal her national identity from the guards, the protagonist encounters a conflict between man and society – and between citizenship and identity. King uses figurative language to put forth an explicit political argument that citizenship and identity are not the same, accomplishing this through a focus on the narrator’s perspective and the importance of the Blackfoot identity to the narrator’s mother. In particular, he makes this claim through his use of metaphors and humourous language. Humour is illustrated through the characterization of the main characters, especially via the perspective of the narrator, a thirteen-year-old boy. King utilizes humour to deliver his message regarding identity through the perspective of the narrator, without seeming like the author himself is presenting it.

In a world in which people have fundamental disagreements regarding the substance and purpose of human existence and what constitute ‘the good life’, it is a question how should human rights be installed within a nation’s legal system. This essay argues that because we cannot ascertain without doubt what human’s nature is, and in order to prevent atrocities as those in the Second World War: all humans should enjoy, as members of the human species, fundamental rights to secure their existence. Hence, within a nation’s legal system, those are known to be civil rights. Further, political rights should be ensured firstly to the citizens of that nation, but, due to the rapid globalization and the growing fluidity of boarders (for example in Europe)

This from of citizenship arose in the Treaty of West Phalli that ended the one hundred year war. The treaty stated that each state had economic sovereignty and control over its’ territorial boundaries. This form of citizenship is a way in which to delineate individuals of one nation from another. The concepts for which this form of citizenship is based on were created over four hundred years ago and are no longer an adequate way of looking at citizenship. Globalization and interdependence among various nations has challenged the idea of national sovereignty.

In “Not your Homeland” by Edwidge Danticat she argues that in post 9/11 America, Haitian immigrants were mistreated because of the attack done on the twin towers by immigrants. The Haitians that entered America to seeking for a better life were looked at as terrorist. Danticat describes her experiences with meeting the Haitian refugees and how they were treated like criminals for entering America, along with their living conditions in the detention centers. She even talks about an emotional experience she had when her Haitian uncle, who was legally able to enter America, had to request to stay in a temporary Asylum because he was not able to return to Haiti, and if he did he would have been killed. (598-601) As Danticat had reported the mistreatment

The concept of being a good international citizen departs from this view and has us believe “that states should be cognisant of and accountable to in the conduct of their international politics and foreign policy…” (Langlois, pp. 221). However, there are many barriers to the creation of this cosmopolitan world order and its promotion of human rights. At the core of international relations theory, it is held that all states are considered sovereign. The state has the authority to govern within its territory without the interference of outside states or actors.

Within the frames of the new reality, those immigrants face myriad problems associated with finding their way to cope with the assumed expectations and identifying their relatively split identities. This leads to a multi-level conflict that results from the conception or definition of national identity according to the visionary of state versus the socio-cultural diversity reflected in real life.

The reading Paradox of National Identity: Region, Nation, and Canadian Idol by Boulou Ebanda, and Ruth Middlebrook focuses on the 2006 season of Canada Idol and how it manufactures the Canadian identity.

Throughout the quarter we have traveled the globe contemplating the opposition between tradition and modernity, examining a vast transnational sociocultural system, observing borders and how they are produced and navigated, and spent a great deal of time looking at migration, immigration, refugees, and asylum seekers. As a result, a big part of the quarter was spent considering the enforcement institutions that make up the system of sovereign nation-states. Of great importance to us has been the ways in which these institutions drive and make possible the movement of people by classifying and managing them. In this essay I will argue that institutions such as refugee camps and detention centers play a fundamental role in the stripping of and recreation of identities. I will first examine the role of these institutions, next I will analyze the ways in which bodies are stripped of their identities and forced to take on new ones, and third, I will examine the ways in which individuals or groups of people pushback or resist these techniques of control and production of new identities(Kahn).

There are also 10 million stateless people who had been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.

In most of the cases opposing the concept of human rights to national security is erroneous and unreasonable construction because the national security is the concept which precludes the physical and mental security of all members of the society, and therefore includes and predetermines the possibility of exercising human rights and freedoms. Without security the well-being is impossible.

Citizenship confers on an individual an ability to participate in democracy such as decision-making and inclusion in policy making processes, (Michels, 2011). Citizenship gives one participatory power; in the decision making process of their country of origin, in the same way citizenship can be a form of capital to an individual. ‘Citizenship constitutes a strategically constructed form of capital which manifests in formal (legal and institutional) and informal (practiced and cultural) forms’’ (Bauder H., 2008:315).’’People who possess a certain form of capital are able to distinguish themselves from others who lack that form of capital’’ (Bauder, 2008:318). Such distinctions can increase gaps in social class orders and increase feelings of relative deprivation between migrant families and non-migrant families (de Haas, 2010).Capital forms the foundation of social life and dictates one’s position within the social

Citizenship is highly coveted in many nations, so coveted in fact that through only a few processes can one become a citizen for most nations, might that process be natural birth or naturalization. Citizenship and its privileges were also highly valued in Rome, except becoming a citizen was extremely difficult if not impossible. Roman citizenship also leads to assassinations and war within the Italian peninsula. There is a complex history to Roman citizenship.

The doctrine of human rights were created to protect every single human regardless of race, gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation and other differences. It is based on human dignity and the belief that no one has the right to take this away from another human being. The doctrine states that every ‘man’ has inalienable rights of equality, but is this true? Are human rights universal? Whether human rights are universal has been debated for decades. There have been individuals and even countries that oppose the idea that human rights are for everybody. This argument shall be investigated in this essay, by: exploring definitions and history on human rights, debating on whether it is universal while providing examples and background