WG3 Accessing citizenship

Working Group 3 ‘Accessing citizenship’ focuses on the historical and present ways in which citizenship regimes have provided, or prevented, people from accessing their ID. This includes the role that civil registries, national identification systems, passport offices, the welfare state, citizenship tests, border officials, and more, have played in determining how citizenship is defined and who gains access to different services, territories and opportunities.

We also identify the present challenges within and beyond the EU. This includes emerging technologies, such as biometrics and data collation, as well as the impact of changing citizenship laws and colonial legacies on individuals and their interactions with the state. We are particularly interested in more closely examining the progress and status of Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 which is ambitiously aiming to provide universal legal identity by 2030.

Focus points

  • What role does the EU have? Transnational citizenship, barriers, facilitators
  • Citizenship tests
  • Hereditary citizenship laws – colonial legacies/different gender impacts; disadvantages faced by sexual minorities.
  • Children’s access to citizenship and factors leading to refusal of citizenship (e.g. family status)
  • Impacts of technology on access to ID
  • Sustainable development goal 16.9 – legal identity by 2030
  • Commercialisation of passports – buying and selling passports/citizenship

Activities

  • Collation of bibliography for publication on HIDDEN website.
  • Coordination and participation in Training School
  • Round table with policy makers on centring migrant, refugee/asylum seekers’ voices in policy initiatives that directly affect them and members of the Legal Identity Task Force of the UN SDG 16.9 to critically analyse and discuss modern technological
    innovations in digital IDs
  • Regular WG meetings to coordinate, share research findings and plan further activities and workshop hosted at same time
  • Participation in Action conference
  • STSM
  • Preparation of future funding bid

Deliverables

  • Contribution to online bibliography
  • Report on Training school on contemporary citizenship challenges in the
    EU for children and young people
  • Report on the round table, available online through HIDDEN’s website and advertised widely through the social media channels. This report will be a basis for
    developing a set of recommendations for policy makers dealing with IDs for
    migrant and non-migrant populations
  • Report on Annual workshop on theme or method of the group on website
  • Reports on regular WG meetings
  • Publication of 2 scientific articles
  • STSM reports
  • Contribution to joint funding Application