The Naturalization of the Vulnerable: An International Responsibility with Demanding Implications

Abstract

What is owed to individuals who find themselves in a stateless condition? This article addresses this question by providing a novel republican account of the human right to legal citizenship. I argue that such individuals are owed citizenship and that this duty corresponding to their human right to legal citizenship falls primarily on the entire international community and only derivatively on single states. I then show that those owed citizenship as a matter of human rights are not only the formally stateless but also, surprisingly, refugees, some displaced people, and arguably, some long-term migrants too. This view contributes to the literature on human rights by showing that the standard view of states as primary duty bearers, and international institutions as only secondary duty bearers, needs improvement, for some duties correlated with human rights are primarily international. It also advances the debate in the political theory of migration on the duty to naturalize the formally and de facto stateless by clarifying this duty’s nature, grounds, scope, international dimension, and implications.