Tag Archives: ethnicity

Ethnic un-mixing in Eastern Europe?

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Costica Dumbrava | Published in Introduction: Citizenship in Post-communist Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European Migration Review

pexels-photo-262488After 1990 most Eastern European countries acted as ‘nationalising states’ (Brubaker 1996), seeking to secure the control of the core ethnic majority over state institutions and over the official definition of the nation. Citizenship policies have been used to ensure the unity of the nation within and across state borders (Pogonyi, Kovács and Körtvélyesi 2010). Whereas the explicit exclusion from citizenship based on ethnic grounds was prohibited by international norms, which most of these countries were forced to accept as a condition for European and transatlantic integration, indirect exclusion based on seemingly legitimate grounds was still possible. For example, Estonia and Latvia effectively denaturalised large proportions of their populations by reinstating their pre-Soviet citizenship laws and thus excluding from citizenship all Soviet-era immigrants and their descendants (Gelazis 2000). Continue reading →

Don’t put the baby in the dirty bathwater! A Rejoinder

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forum_jus_sanguiniCostica Dumbrava |Published in: EUDO Citizenship Forum, European University Institute

This debate on citizenship and assisted reproduction technologies has been a fascinating one and has succeeded in unravelling some of the major issues about the past, present and future of ius sanguinis citizenship. I was delighted to see that many of the contributors shared my concerns about the failings of the current system of transmission of citizenship from parent to child. I learned a great deal from reading the various reactions to my deliberately provocative propositions. With these concluding remarks, I use the privilege of the last word to engage with several key points emerging from the debate and to clarify and, as much as possible, elaborate my position. However, I am hopeful that this debate does not finish here and I look forward to continuing through other ventures. Continue reading →

Rolling back history: The Romanian policy of restoration of citizenship to former citizens

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Romania and EUCostica Dumbrava | Published in: Citizenship in Southeast Europe, University of Edinburgh

After the fall of the communist regime, Romania adopted legal provisions regarding the facilitated re-acquisition of citizenship by former citizens and their descendants. According to the 1991 citizenship law, former citizens who “have had their citizenship withdrawn against their will or for other reasons not imputably to them” could reacquire Romanian citizenship without having to renounce other citizenship(s) or take up residence in the country. These provisions aimed at restoring Romanian citizenship particularly to former citizens and their descendants who inhabited the territories lost by Romania in 1940, namely Bessarabia, now the Republic of Moldova, Northern Bukovina and Southern Bessarabia, now part of Ukraine. This policy has attracted important criticism from various domestic and external stakeholders, including possible beneficiaries, governments of neighbouring countries and European politicians. Overtly passionate arguments and a search for sensationalism seem to dominate the debates about the restoration of Romanian citizenship, thus obscuring the complex purposes and implications of the policy. In this short piece, I point out various justifications of this policy and underline several of its major implications. Continue reading →