Vol. 6, No. 5 (May, 1996) pp. 88-89

RIGHTS ACROSS BORDERS: IMMIGRATION AND THE DECLINE OF CITIZENSHIP by David Jacobson. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1996. 181 pp. $33.50.

Reviewed by Lawrence M. Friedman, Stanford University School of Law

The main argument of this book is that citizenship, once a cornerstone concept of the nation-state, is in decline. Its rival is the notion of universal, fundamental human rights -- rights which, presumably, do not depend on borders and citizenship. These notions are "transforming the nation-state system." All residents of a state, "noncitizens as well as citizens," can claim these rights; therefore, the state "is becoming less a sovereign agent and more an institutional forum of a larger international and constitutional order based on human rights" (pp. 2-3).

Of course, universal human rights have been around for a long time, and the concept helped in fact to legitimate the nation-state; but the rights were always "construed nationally"-- there had to be a country, with boundaries, and with a "people" or "nation" inside those boundaries (pp. 14-15). Foreigners were simply outside the circle of those who were protected, or who could try to force a sovereign nation to respect those rights. Now all of this has changed, according to Jacobson -- swept away by a tide of immigration. A flock of new institutions has grown up to support and enforce these universal rights. The distinction between citizen and non-citizen has gotten exceedingly blurry. Anybody who is actually IN a country is entitled to the full protection of the law, can exercise almost all of the rights of citizens (except, usually, voting or holding office), and gets to feed at the same trough of the welfare state as the actual citizens.

All this seems reasonably clear as far as the status of resident aliens goes. But even for actual citizens, the state' s duties are "increasingly" determined by "international human rights codes" (p. 120). At least this is true for the European countries who have cast their lot with the European Union, or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or who signed the European Convention on Human Rights. Hence, the state is tending to become, in a way, nothing more than an agent of outside organizations, for enforcing rights and guaranteeing rights -- the rights get articulated elsewhere; and if the state does a bad job, it is accountable to its citizens before these international bodies.

In the United States, too, citizenship as such is less and less the precious jewel it presumably was in the past. American law, like European law, now gives aliens a whole basket of rights and entitlements. (Arguably, then, what is really vital is the green card; formal citizenship is a frill). The rights of resident aliens are, to be sure, hotly contested in the political sphere; but so far to little avail. The state is no longer the same thing as the "nation," insofar as the concept of a "nation" implies a population bound together by ethnic kinship or whatever -- in any event, something more and deeper than just BEING someplace inside the territory (p. 72). In fact, according to Jacobson, the development of "rights across borders" (or, more accurately, independent of borders) puts in doubt the very "legitimacy of the state, in its classic nation-state form" (p. 71).

What can we conclude from all this? The author thinks that identity is becoming "deterritorialized." Communities can "live in the same locations in a patchwork fashion;" their "center" need not be located in the same place as their actual residence (p. 134). What

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he means by this is that (say) the Turkish community in Germany can have its "center" in Turkey; African-Americans can treat Africa as "home," and so on. The state no longer commands the total loyalty of its citizens (did it ever?); and one result is the kind of cultural pluralism which is so prominent a feature of modern America.

I think there are a number of important ideas expressed here, but two things about the general thesis make me a little uneasy. In the first place, the human rights aspects of the thesis seem to be mainly relevant to Europe, despite the material about the United States. The countries in Europe are struggling to define some sort of union; the process is painful, and it is taking a long time, but so far at least there has been considerable movement along the road toward what looks like a dim and emerging mutant of federalism. If we are talking about rights across borders, we have to ask, what is a border? It may be that all of Europe for some purposes constitutes a kind of super-country; and for other purposes, the supercountry is the European Union, and the "borders" in question are not the borders of Belgium or Austria, but the borders of the Union. After all, the rights that are enforced apply only to people who are physically inside "Europe." Sri Lankans cannot run to European judicial organs to complain about oppression in their country; they have no standing.

The second problem is the fact that human rights may be universal in theory; but what is the practice? Outside of the small group of fancy and wealthy democracies, they are violated brutally every day by a whole coterie of military dictators and local satraps. They are denounced as bourgeois and hegemonic by the totalitarian left, sneered at as unsuitable for countries with a "Confucian" tradition, and, in short, contested in all sorts of ways. Mass migration and guest workers, to be sure, create pluralism where it was not to be found before; but political backlash is also on the rise -- not to mention "ethnic cleansing." I think it is undoubtedly true that the message of universal human rights is spreading, through the media and otherwise, and that it has penetrated into consciousnesses far from the centers of enlightenment. But governments at least have a long way to go in many parts of this unhappy world.

At the very end of the book, Jacobson challenges scholars to rethink their views of the state. Current theories of political sociology and international relations are rooted in conceptions that, he feels, are losing their relevance and bite. His case may be slightly exaggerated, it may be mainly relevant to the club of Western democracies; but the challenge is real enough. This is a thought-provoking book.


Copyright 1996