While it is a basic principle of the international legal order that everyone has the right to a nationality, states remain largely autonomous in deciding who they recognize as a citizen. This results in a large variety of conditions across countries for access to the legal status of citizenship across states -at birth or later in life- as well as how this status can be lost. Working with scholars and research institutes around the world, we study how the acquisition and loss of citizenship status are regulated, why these rules differ across national and regional contexts and over time, and what impact this has on the lives of people affected by these rules. Our research focuses on issues such as birthright citizenship, statelessness, gender equality and non-discrimination, migrant naturalization, securitization and citizenship deprivation, national minorities, diasporas, investor citizenship, among others.

Access to citizenship and electoral rights are crucial for how democracies work in practice. Yet the relation between citizenship boundary-setting and democratic government remains understudied. The access to franchise is determined both through citizenship laws, which define who can participate in elections as citizens, as well as through electoral laws that regulate the conditions under which individuals (citizens or not) have the right to vote and be elected. Our research aims to understand both how citizenship and electoral laws affect democratic participation, as well as how the development of political regimes shapes the conditions under which rights are made available. We focus on global variation as well on regional projects such as the rights of mobile citizens within the European Union (EU).

The Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) provides reliable and comparative data on the content, causes, and consequences of the laws that govern the acquisition and loss of citizenship and the franchise. It enables scholars, policy-makers, and the general public to understand how citizenship connects people across international borders. GLOBALCIT publishes databases, national and comparative reports, indicators, and debates on citizenship status and electoral rights. It relies on a large international network of academic experts who write country reports, collect legal documents, and provide input for comparative databases. GLOBALCIT brings together the expertise of the European University Institute’s Global Governance Programme (GGP), the University of Edinburgh and the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE). These partners with their permanent research teams are represented by the four co-directors of the observatory, Rainer Bauböck, Jelena Dzankic, Jo Shaw and Maarten Vink.

GLOBALCIT participates also in externally funded projects on citizenship and electoral rights. Currently, GLOBALCIT is a member of the EU-CITZEN Network funded by the European Commission.

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