Born Lucky? Rethinking Citizenship in a Globalized World
- Eshal Zahur
- Mar 28
- 13 min read
Two infants enter the world on the same day, but their fates have already been written in different fonts. One enters an elegant Manhattan hospital, wrapped in the privileges of U.S. citizenship: a passport that opens doors, access to world-level education, and the invisible armour of legal recognition.
The other takes a first breath in a boiling refugee camp in Lebanon, born stateless, without papers, uncertain. Their cries are equally desperate, their humanity equally real, but the invisible lottery of their respective birthplaces has placed them on vastly differing and unequal paths.
Not long after his swearing-in on January 20, Donald Trump, the present U.S. President, in his second term, initiated a barrage of executive orders, one of which touched on birthright citizenship—an automatic right of U.S.-born persons to citizenship by virtue of birth in the country. The order argued that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment may not extend to those children born in the U.S. whose parents are unauthorized immigrants or hold temporary visas.
However, Gerald Neuman, Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School, claims that historical evidence and Supreme Court rulings support the intention to give citizenship to all persons born in the United States, regardless of their parents' legal status. The acts of Donald Trump have raised debates on immigration and the legal construction of citizenship across the globe.
Injecting luck into the heart of citizenship is an arbitrary assignment into the club of belonging, shaping destinies even before a child learns to walk. Our legal systems still cling to outdated doctrines—jus soli (citizenship by birth on national soil) and jus sanguinis (citizenship by bloodline) in an age of unrelenting migrations and global interconnectedness. Once pragmatic governance tools in an era where people stayed grounded to their place of birth or ancestry, these now serve as barricades of exclusion, granting a few their birth rights while denying others.
Through attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship in the U.S., Trump is pushing a ripple in today's massive tide. Worldwide, nations are abolishing jus soli citizenship, tightening nationality laws, and wielding citizenship as a weapon of exclusion. The cracks in the system are widening. If citizenship is meant to reflect true membership in a community, why has it learned to depend upon random geography or serendipitous bloodline?
The Historical Evolution of Citizenship: The Roots of Inclusion and Exclusion
Citizenship has never been a concept reducible to birth; instead, it has always been wielded as an instrument of power and a gatekeeper deciding who belongs and who remains an outsider. Its origins may be traced back to the medieval theories of law. Through time, two competing visions have emerged: jus soli and jus sanguinis, citizenship by soil and by blood, discussed at length by legal scholar Ayelet Shachar in The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality.
The principle of jus soli originated in English common law, whereby birth within a territory was sufficient to claim citizenship rights. Calvin's Case (1608) ruled that kingly allegiance alone sufficed to establish one's status, thus heralding modern birthright citizenship. Centuries later, this principle crossed the Atlantic, enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and reaffirmed in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), as a result of which children born on American soil to immigrant parents automatically acquired citizenship.
Meanwhile, jus sanguinis took root in continental Europe, where nationality was regarded as not so much a matter of territory but of lineage. For much of its history, Germany refused to naturalize immigrants who were not ethnically German, hence keeping whole generations of Turkish immigrants in legal limbo.
Likewise, Italy has been firm about citizenship by descent, reinforcing a conception of national identity tied to heritage rather than civic participation. In the past five years, India has been gradually switching from jus soli to jus sanguinis, which bears testimony to the growing influence of ethno-nationalism.
The battle between these two models has never been purely legal—it has shaped the fates of millions. Once-gleaming jus soli nations are retreating, hardened by fears of "birth tourism" and failed integration. The open doors are slowly shutting, as citizenship laws now become less about belonging and increasingly about excluding.
Unlike lawful residency or permanent status, which offer a place to live but not a voice to shape the society one inhabits, citizenship grants the right to vote, the ability to run for office, and the security of belonging without fear of revocation or conditional acceptance. It is the difference between merely existing within a country and truly being recognized as part of its fabric.
Citizenship forms the major distinction between existence within a country and the ability to claim belonging: more than a place to live, an actual voice in the shaping of one’s society. Millions of people remain in a liminal state, measuring up to approximately one-quarter of migrants worldwide. They are perpetual guests in a house they have helped build. Exclusion has gone beyond the mere bureaucratic: it has included closed doors to particular avenues for employment, the pervasive anxiety of deportation, and the denial of national identity.
The Legal Challenges: Who Gets to Belong?
Citizenship is often imagined as having a fixed and neutral status—an administrative formality that easily categorizes individuals into legal categories. But it is a political construct, a gatekeeping mechanism for deciding who belongs and who does not. Legal constructs of citizenship unfold these contradictions into both over- and under-inclusion: where memberships are inherited by someone with little to no real ties to a country, while those who genuinely build a life in a country are considered outsiders by the law.
Some obtain citizenship by sheer accident, their legal status based solely on ancestry or origin in place rather than their actual connection with that nation. This is exactly the pitfall of overinclusion, where undefined citizenship is granted automatically on the mere basis of ancestral nationality—some individuals may never go to the country where they are qualified as citizens.
Let's look at Sheinbein v. Israel (1999). An American-born fugitive tried pulling the stunt of using Israel's Law of Return to escape prosecution for murder in the United States. Sheinbein's connections to Israel stemmed solely from his father, who was an Israeli citizen. This permitted him to establish his claim to Israeli citizenship even though he had never resided there. This is a fine example of how jus sanguinis—citizenship by descent—can be manipulated when one's end goal is to evade justice.
Similarly, ancestral citizenship laws in Portugal and Israel have been exploited by Russian oligarchs to obtain citizenship under laws that grant nationality to descendants of Sephardic Jews (in Portugal) or Jews of the specified heritage (under Israel's Law of Return). These loopholes expose a paradox: citizenship can be inherited like an heirloom, even by those with no meaningful participation in the national community.
Underinclusion is the other end of the spectrum. Underinclusion is the exclusion of persons who have generally deep ties to a country but do not happen to have the 'right' birthplace. Thousands of foreign-born adoptees would have ended up in limbo before the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 because they were raised by American parents and were indeed part of the whole American experience, yet denied citizenship because of their birth outside of American soil.
An identical injustice transpired in Romans v. Canada (2004), where stateless residents, some of them even living in Canada for decades, were barred from naturalization because of highly stringent nationality laws. The laws stated that applicants for naturalization had to provide proof of existing citizenship elsewhere, effectively barring stateless individuals from obtaining Canadian citizenship.
These cases demonstrate how citizenship laws favor birthplace over lived experience and, therefore, leave many languishing in a legal and existential state of uncertainty. Underinclusion is one of the most insidious failures of traditional citizenship frameworks, and its consequences are deeply felt by immigrants, stateless individuals, and long-term residents who remain legal outsiders despite their full integration into society.
Consider Germany's historical approach toward Turkish "guest workers" (Gastarbeiter) for a more systemic example. Invited in the post-war era to contribute to the nation's rebuilding, they worked, formed families, and contributed toward German society in every way except on paper.
As per strict jus sanguinis policies, their children and grandchildren were nothing but foreigners in the only country they had ever known. Only in the early 2000s would Germany offer the citizenship route, with many paying the price—generation after generation grew up feeling like second-class citizens, knowing no other home.
Dominicans of Haitian descent are another instance. They have their exclusion from legal rights worsened by ethnic and racial discrimination. For example, in 2013, a ruling declared thousands of people of Haitian descent as stateless by arbitrarily retroactively stripping them of their Dominican citizenship in the Dominican Republic.
These are not mere legal niceties; they are potent life-changing rulings that define who belongs and who remains condemned to exist in the shadows.
Underinclusion is not just an inconvenience; it is a form of structural injustice. People without citizenship have no political representation, no access to essential social services, and they cannot even exercise their fundamental right to call the place they live home. Outdated citizenship laws become more entrenched with time as they harden an already faction-ridden society: a society where some are born into an unearned socio-cultural sense of belonging, while others, however, remain eternal outsiders.
Legal institutions have typically buttressed such inequities instead of dismantling them. Historically, courts faced off against the claims of sovereign states to specify who would be included in their citizenries even when the resulting definitions rendered people stateless or resulted in human rights violations.
Courts have upheld the sovereign right of states to define their citizenry over and over. Ortiz-Martinez v. U.S. (2007) exemplifies this scenario, in which the court reaffirmed strict statutory interpretations that gave no automatic citizenship to certain foreign-born persons, even those with strong ties to the U.S.
They could not claim automatic citizenship without explicitly meeting statutory requirements based on the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which mandated that foreign-born individuals seeking automatic U.S. citizenship must have at least one U.S. citizen parent. Such rulings are a testament to the unwillingness of the judiciary to challenge the rigidity of citizenship law, as its definition becomes increasingly anachronistic in a globalized world.
However, the changing patterns of migration and the increased scales of diasporic communities have made a vital question emerge among legal scholars and policymakers: should citizenship be a right of earning rather than entry by inheritance?
The Case for Jus Nexi: A New Model for an Inclusive Future
The current system is fundamentally out of touch with modern realities. The birthplace and bloodline have become increasingly arbitrary markers of belonging in an interconnected world. The two traditional models of citizenship—jus soli and jus sanguinis—belonged to an era when nation-states were isolated fortresses. Today, with borders blurring and transnational communities being the norm, these fail to account for the realities of migration and integration.
As such, a growing body of scholarship, from the writings of political scientists and legal theorists like Alex Aleinikoff, Joseph Carens, Seyla Benhabib, and Linda Bosniak, cries out for a new model: jus nexi—that is, relating citizenship to meaningful social and economic ties instead of random birth.
Jus nexi states that long-term residents will earn citizenship through active involvement in society, regardless of the origins of their birth or their blood. This model would honor the civic contributions of immigrants and long-term residents, prevent citizenship from being given arbitrarily to people with no real tie to a country, and redefine the concept of nationality to actual belonging instead of ethnic lineage and territoriality.
Under a jus nexi framework, nationality would no longer be a hereditary privilege or immutable legal status you are born with, but instead, one that is earned through connection, contribution, and integration. Automatic citizenship is proposed to be conferred to long-term residents after a stipulated period of active participation in civic and economic life in the country.
Stacks of migrants and stateless individuals who work, pay taxes, and contribute socially through, for example, volunteer work or cultural engagement would not remain in the limbo of the law simply because they do not possess the "right" lineage or birthplace.
Under jus nexi, they would have become citizens automatically at some point following an active period of participating in a country's civic and economic life, benefiting millions of migrants and stateless persons currently excluded. Ethnic nationalism would be detached from citizenship laws, and nationality would be inclusive rather than ancestry-dependent. Citizenship then becomes a civic contract. Rights and responsibilities are related not to mere inheritance but to real contributions.
Jus nexi would make this condition the default instead of making it a rare exception, as with permanent residents in Canada or the U.S., who are required to meet residency and community engagement requirements before naturalization. Additionally, where jus soli or jus sanguinis depends on passive conditions (where you were born or who your parents were), jus nexi identifies citizenship to be an active relationship forged by genuinely participating within the society.
As birthright citizenship is hotly debated in the U.S., Canada, and India, the question is no longer about rethinking the status quo, it is about how quickly we can craft a system that truly reflects a globalized world. Jus nexi is not just an abstract legal theory—it is the next step in making citizenship what it was always meant to be: a recognition of belonging and not an accident of being born.
Legal definitions of citizenship have historically been shaped by political, economic, and colonial interests. Jus nexi challenges these outdated frameworks by prioritizing an individual's genuine social, economic, and civic ties over arbitrary birth circumstances.
Counterarguments and Challenges
This change toward jus nexi is not without its thorns. Those against the shift claim that the standard of "meaningful ties" incurs as well as creates legal uncertainty and requires the case-by-case scrutiny of states.
With no clear and standardized set of criteria, they fear that governments would have discretionary power to apply these criteria unpredictably, lending themselves to arbitrary approval or rejection of would-be citizens. This apprehension is not without basis. The same forces have long tormented citizenship applications: gross bureaucratic inefficiencies, political bias, and changing policy interests.
Furthermore, nationalist governments have resisted the expansion of paths toward citizenship throughout history, fearing the looser application of citizenship laws would somehow "dilute" their national identity or risk incentivizing migration for economic purposes. The issue of birthright citizenship in the U.S., particularly during the Trump administration, is a case in point.
Laws taking away jus soli, which appear unconstitutional in light of United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), originated out of apprehension regarding "anchor babies," coupled with fears that unauthorized migrants were taking undue advantage of birthright citizenship laws.
Yet, these fears ignore the more relevant fact that many countries have already incorporated jus nexi principles into their legal systems, with success. Portugal’s Nationality Act states that citizenship may be granted to persons who meet requirements relating to continued residence and contributions to society.
This measure was modified in 2018 on a more extensive basis by permitting a son or daughter of immigrants to citizenship through only one year of proven ties to the country, moving away from a strict birthright-based nationality. Additionally, Uruguay has applied another flexible model, which correlates residency and social ties to presume legal citizenship, thus recognizing citizens who have embedded themselves in the nation's socio-economic fabric.
The transformation in Germany from jus sanguinis to a more residence-based model also provides a separate case study. Citizenship laws have historically excluded Turkish "guest workers" and generations of their descendants from obtaining automatic citizenship even after generations of residence.
However, this changed in 2000: Germany reformed the citizenship laws and allowed the naturalization of children born to foreigners if at least one parent had legally resided in Germany for eight years, recognizing the importance of long-term presence in the formation of national identity.
Indeed, even within the provinces of Canada, the doctrine of jus nexi has shaped judicial interpretations of citizenship law. For instance, while adjudicating the judgment in Benner v. Canada in 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that citizenship laws discriminating based on gender (denying citizenship to foreign-born children of Canadian mothers but not fathers) were unconstitutional. The emphasis by the court was that the laws of citizenship should have regard for the real substantive connection of persons to the country and not to rigid technicalities.
These cases illustrate that jus nexi is not radical or unworkable—it is an evolving legal reality. Countries are learning that citizenship derives legitimacy not just from inheritance but from democratic and civic participation. The real question is not whether jus nexi is possible, but whether the global legal order would be ready to adopt a more just and rational approach to belonging.
Citizenship as a Right, Not a Privilege
The greatest lottery on earth is that of birth: some among us are fortunate enough to win the lottery of citizenship by mere chance of birth, while others are consigned to a life-long fate of statelessness or second-class civil standing. Jus soli or jus sanguinis should not determine who belongs, but participation should. Contribution should. Connection should.
Let us abandon the notion that nationality should be inherited like a family heirloom. Citizenship should be a property not of birth but of bond, of commitment forged through active participation in a society. Why should someone who has never set foot in a country inherit automatic citizenship while a lifelong resident remains an outsider? Why should a child raised in a nation, speaking its language, paying its taxes, and investing in its future, be considered a foreigner on mere genetic lineage?
Simple: they should not.
"Jus nexi" proposes a way ahead. It recognizes that true belonging goes beyond bloodlines and birthplace—it is about who you are, what you contribute, and how deeply rooted you are in the community. This is not only a legal argument; it's a value argument. A nation cannot be a club with arbitrary rules for entry—it has to be a communal house into which everyone can move and build a life.
Citizenship should be a bridge, not a barrier—a promise that justice, equality, and inclusion will be found in a world in dire need of those traits. Enough of clinging to legal fiction. We need to acknowledge the reality of human belonging.
Edited by Thenthamizh SS
Eshal (she/her) is a student of law at the National Law University Odisha, and Senior Copyeditor at Political Pandora.
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Keywords: Birthright Citizenship Policy, Citizenship Laws USA, Immigration Reform Debate, Global Statelessness Crisis, Jus Soli Vs Jus Sanguinis, Trump Citizenship Policy, Immigration Law, Citizenship Exclusion Trends, Legal Identity and Migration, Global Nationality Laws, Statelessness and Human Rights, Birthright Citizenship Debate, U.S. Immigration Policy 2025, Migration and Legal Belonging, Future of Citizenship.
