Comparing Citizenship Regimes

This chapter discusses comparative research on the regulation of the acquisition and loss of citizenship status and of the implications of having this status or not. Citizenship regimes are understood here as institutionalized systems of formal and informal norms that define access to membership, as well as rights and duties associated with membership, within a polity. Comparing citizenship regimes thus implies the study of how political membership is regulated in different contexts. The chapter focuses on how the state of the art developed with regard to its key research questions. This discussion will follow the comparative literature on citizenship regimes, which is organized around three sets of questions: along which dimensions can citizenship regimes be differentiated; which factors structure variation in citizenship regimes; and how do citizenship regimes impact on social, economic and political outcomes? The concluding section reflects on theoretical and methodological challenges faced by scholars analyzing these questions.