Nationality

Legal status of persons
Concepts

Citizenship
Nationality
Naturalization
Leave to Remain
Immigration
Illegal immigration
Statelessness

Legal designations

Citizen
Native-born citizen
Naturalized citizen
Dual-citizen
Alien
Migrant worker
Refugee
Illegal immigrant
Political prisoner
Stateless person
Administrative detain

Social politics

Immigration law
Nationality law
Nationalism
Nativism (politics)
Immigration debate

Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state. Nationality can be acquired by being born within the jurisdiction of a state, by inheriting it from parents, or by a process of naturalization. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state.

By custom, it is the right of each state to determine who its nationals are. Such determinations are part of nationality law. In some cases, determinations of nationality are also governed by public international law—for example, by treaties on statelessness and the European Convention on Nationality.

The word citizenship is often used in a different sense from nationality. The most common distinguishing feature of citizenship is that citizens have the right to participate in the political life of the state, such as by voting or standing for election. The term national includes both citizens and non-citizens.

Alternatively, nationality can refer to membership in a nation (collective of people sharing a national identity, usually based on ethnic and cultural ties and self-determination) even if that nation has no state, such as the Basques, Kurds, Tamils and Scots.

Individuals may also be considered nationals of groups with semi-autonomous status which have ceded some power to a larger government, such as the federally recognized tribes of Native Americans in the United States. Spanish law recognises the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, Galicia and the Basque Country as "nationalities" (Nacionalidades), while in Italy, the German speakers of South Tyrol are considered to be Austrian Nationals.

Contents

Alternative usage

In several non-English speaking areas of the world, the cognate word for nationality in local language may be understood as a synonym of ethnicity, as nation can be defined as a grouping based on cultural self-determination rather than on relations with a state. For example, many people would say they are Kurds, i.e., of Kurdish nationality, even though no such Kurdish state exists. In the context of former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia, nationality is often used as translation of the Russian and Serbo-Croatian terms (национальность/ natsionalnost, народность/narodnost) used for ethnic groups and local affiliations within those (former) states. Similarly, the term "nationalities of China" refers to cultural groups in China. Spain is one Nation, made out by nationalities, which are not nations, or can be considered smaller nations within the Spanish Nation.

See also

References

White, Philip L. (2006). "Globalization and the Mythology of the Nation State," In A.G.Hopkins, ed. Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 257-284.

External links

Open source encyclopedia content modification information:

This page was last modified on 15 March 2010 at 08:27.

Authorship and Review

Open source encyclopedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Content is sourced directly from Wikipedia and is authored by an open community of volunteers. It is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Nationality", which is available in its original form here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nationality

All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Wikipedia® itself is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.