Incongruent migration categorisations and competing citizenship claims: ‘return’ and hypermigration in transnational migration circuits

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarly interventions propose that the principle of jus nexi (effective connections) or jus domicile (domicile) should replace birthright or birthplace considerations when assigning citizenship status and political membership. Nonetheless, both views privilege notions of territorial presence and the ideal of political community. This paper focuses on Mainland Chinese return migration from Canada to metropolitan cities in China. The dual citizenship restriction enforced by China means those that naturalised in Canada have relinquished their right to Chinese citizenship. Should they be considered returnees, immigrants or transnational sojourners in their ancestral homeland? It is this incongruence in migration categorisations compared to migrant life-worlds that this paper aims to examine. The paper also highlights the interface of competing claims to citizenship in the context of Chinese internal migration and new (African) immigration in China, as well as the returnees’ own transnational migration across the lifecourse. It argues that the ordering mechanisms that characterise normative conceptions of citizenship focus on isolated types of migration trends whereas what confronts us more urgently are intersecting migration configurations that underline the incongruence of migration categorisations and the complexity of competing citizenship claims spatially and temporally.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• return migration
• birthright
• domicile
• territory
• transnationalism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 Exceptions include countries such as the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.

2 Transnational migration analyses hold in view the ties that migrants sustain in their sending and receiving countries. In comparison, international migration theories tend to assume linear migration pathways and focus attention on the citizenship politics in either the sending or receiving country only.

3 These ideas interrogating the ideal of political community are drawn from Balibar’s (2004) earlier writing on ‘citizenship without community’, but in a subsequent article, Balibar (2012) moderates this argument to focus on critiquing the nationalism assumed in community.

4 The ‘indicators’ of intention to reside indefinitely as mentioned by Kostakopoulou (2008, 115) include: longstanding and uninterrupted residence in a polity, family ties and the existence of a matrimonial home; social ties; acquisition of property; a professional career; schooling; participation in local politics; the purchase of a burial ground; and membership in associations, churches and clubs.

5 For example, Canadians abroad who are deemed non-resident (i.e. stayed in Canada for less than 183 days in a year) may be exempted from tax for income earned abroad or the full tax amount may not be payable to Canada under bilateral tax treaties.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly funded by the MOE Tier 2 Grant for the project “Aspirations, Urban Governance, and the Remaking of Asian Cities” (WBS number: R-109-000-145-112).