Dual Citizenship as Human Right

Dual citizenship has become an unexceptional status in the wake of globalization yet remains at the sufferance of states. This essay advances the novel claim that dual citizenship should be protectable as a human right. In light of the threat that dual nationals once posed to stable bilateral relations, states were justified, historically, in suppressing the status. As that threat has dissipated, the values of freedom of association and liberal autonomy implied by citizenship ties should trump lingering state resistance. Failure to recognize the status also burdens the exercise of political rights by raising the cost of naturalization. Insofar as dual citizenship undermines state solidarities, that interest is too diffuse to justify nonapplication of associational and self-governance norms. There is growing evidence from state practice that dual citizenship is appropriately situated in a human rights framework