Wikipedia talk:Citizenship and nationality

Opening remarks
Please offer your assessment of this proposal. If most people find it acceptable, I will add a ‘Citizenship’ field to the template, and a link in the documentation to this guideline (note that the proposal is written as though this is already the case). Discussions that lead to this proposal can be found here and here. I look forward to your comments! – SJL 05:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC) that is your boy matt hagen —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.215.218.141 (talk) 16:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Personal, ranty, idiomatic, political and questionable
There are some good ideas lurking in this, but this initial draft is entirely too one-editor to ever make it as a WP guideline. Aside from tone and phrasing, it spends far too much time advancing interpretational theories and trying to source them (I'll bet real money that countersources are just as easy to dig up) instead of using plain language that near-everyone who fluently speaks English already agrees upon. I.e., if you have to cite sources for your definitions in a would-be guideline, then it is probably not guideline material. If you are citing sources for highly persnicketty idiomatic (even if more precise) definitions against the way that English words and phrases are generally used by fluent speakers (e.g. saying that "League of Nations" and "United Nations" are wrong) then you are soapboxing and this is definitely not WP guideline material, even if the "pet peeve" ranting character of it were eliminated. Ultimately, I think that it is more reasonable to note that "citizenship" and "nationality" as sometimes distinguished by people who think about such things can, as concepts, be noted as clearly different in theory but almost always overlapping and usually coterminous, and also recognize that English as used by most people does not make this distinction, requiring descriptive phrasing, not simply a word switch, to annotate the difference where that difference exists and matters. This proposal is basically linguistic activism. There is nothing wrong with linguistic activism per se (cf. the widely successful putsch for gender-neutral wording over the last few decades), but Wikipedia is not the place to launch a new campaign of this sort. The real question to ask here is "will this help our general readership?" Clearly the answer is "no", because the average English speaker/reader does not draw the legal technicality distinctions this essay draws. In closing and just to be clear, I do not think that nothing good can come of this, I just think that as written to date it is about 2/3 off-base on an applicable level, however much the analysis in it may be "right" in one sense or another (principally a sense that matters only to people like immigration, restitution, and indigenous peoples' rights attorneys and judges, in courts of law). —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 09:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Response
Thank you for your comments (delivered with characteristic enthusiasm). I understand your concerns, but disagree with most of them, and hope that I can satisfactorily explain why. To do this as clearly as possible, I have organised my responses to correspond to the four categories that your concerns seem to fall into: the proposal (1) does not conform to ‘everyday’ English; (2) advances a personal, idiosyncratic interpretation of the terms under consideration, and does so for political purposes; (3) may be correct in theory, but is almost irrelevant in practice; and (4) is unhelpful to Wikipedia’s general readership.
 * 1) While it is true that English speakers in the United States are unlikely to differentiate between ‘citizenship’ and nationality’ in everyday language, this is not the case in other countries such as United Kingdom and Canada, respectively home to the second and third largest native English-speaking populations in the world (see the article on the English language).  The United Kingdom, for example, works on the understanding that Scotland and Wales are nations, and officially recognises the Irish as a people with the right to self-determination.  Similarly, the Canadian government recently recognised the Québécois as "a nation within a united Canada", and it is common practice to refer to the country’s aboriginal peoples as ‘First Nations’. The more important point, however, is that it is not clear that Wikipedia policy should be dictated by the meaning of terms in ‘everyday language’, even if that meaning were not context-specific, as is the case here.  This leads me to my second response.
 * 2) I do have an agenda, but not the kind that you seem to think I do.  I joined Wikipedia with the intent of improving its quality in my fields of expertise (see my user profile).  This applies both to articles and to the way that they are framed, which is why I have put forward this proposal. The distinction between citizenship and nationality that I have outlined here is not my own idiosyncratic interpretation, or an attempt at “linguistic activism” — it is a sincere effort to improve the accuracy of the encyclopedia by using scholarly definitions of terms.  While there are certainly sources that use citizenship and nationality as synonyms in passing, I am unaware of any academic literature that actively asserts that these two terms denote the same thing.  Even the strongest of nationalists recognise that the term ‘nation-state’ is not a redundancy.  Also, I am far from the first person to describe the League of Nations and the United Nations as misnomers, and I have added a citation to verify this (if you do not have library access to a copy of the book, you can view the page that I cite through Google Books). Finally, in advocating  the use of the ‘everyday language’ meaning of the term ‘nationality’, you imply that it is politically neutral.  This is not the case.   Using ‘nationality’ to denote both its referent and citizenship privileges a particular political perspective at the expense of others.  Accordingly, I am suggesting that we give preference to citizenship because it is a legal status that is objectively verifiable, unlikely to be contested, and does not privilege a particular political position, which cannot be said for nationality.
 * 3) Your assertion that citizenship and nationality are “almost always overlapping and usually coterminous” is simply false.  The millions of naturalised immigrants living in adopted countries around the world is alone strong and sufficient evidence of this.
 * 4) The argument that adopting this proposal as a guideline would not benefit Wikipedia’s general readership “because the average English speaker/reader does not draw the legal technicality distinctions this essay draws” does not follow, for two reasons.  First, this is not ‘merely’ a legal or technical distinction – the difference between the two terms is substantive and consequential.  Second, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to convey information as accurately as possible, and this often requires going beyond common perceptions. In this case, while most readers will not consciously recognise the difference, they will come away with more accurate information that does not tacitly promote a particular world view.

I hope that this clarifies the purpose of this proposal, and adequately responds to your concerns. – SJL 18:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Again, these distinctions are legal ones that do not reflect general usage. In Canada (the country from which I recently moved back to the US!) the general population certainly do not refer to Quebecois as a nation unto themselves, and it is well-understood that First Nations is a term of art, and that Canadian indigenous ethinicities are in fact Canadians.  I'm not sure what you mean by WP policy being dictated by anything; guidelines are not policy.  WP guidelines that do touch on style and wording matters generally do follow common practice. Getting traction on jargonistic usages is extremely difficult (cf. WP:MOSNUM and the BC/AD versus BCE/CE usage; a number of us want to see BCE/CE across the board, but even after years there is no consensus to go there.)  What is more notable, though, is that WP generally does not call for specific wording choices, anywhere.  There are some guidelines (mostly parts of the MOS) that urge avoidance of certain words because they are ambiguous or for some other reason, but we don't have guidelines advocating specific definitions of terms. Which leads into...
 * Advocating "scholarly definitions of terms" is linguistic activism of the kind I'm talking about. This isn't Scholarpedia or WikiPoliSciGradStudent, it's a general-use reference work written in plain English.  The side point about the UN and LoN is missing the point: It doesn't matter that someone somewhere has written a book that criticizes the names of the organizations - that has not changed general usage, or influenced the names.  I'm not saying you are lying, and I wish you'd stop citing sources all the time as if you are being accused of falsifying data. I'm saying that it makes no difference with regard to what a Wikipedia guideline should say, or whether it should even exist.  Favoring citizenship over nationality because more readily verifiable: I can buy that.  I just doubt that you'll gain WP-wide consensus for it, because most people don't care, many do not see the distinction to begin with, others see a distinction but not precisely the one you do, and those that do think about the matter are probably going to say that, like various other editing disputes and decisions, when this one is problematic it can just be resolved by local consensus at the talk page of the affected article.  I.e., we don't need a new guideline about everything, only things that are sufficiently problematic that they justify another document for editors to learn, and sufficiently frequent that a "FAQ" on the issue is needed in the form of a guideline, and so intractable that it is difficult to resolve the issues without a guideline to cite.
 * I think we're talking past each other on this one. If I become a naturalized citizen of Botswana, then I am a Botswanan.  That is my nationality.  My ethnicity could perhaps be said to be "White American of largely British descent". Yes, there will be cases where things are less clear - was James Joyce Irish or British, given that the UK was occupying and controlling all of Ireland back then? - but these disputes are resolvable where they occur by normal editorial consensus-building.
 * You speak of "substantive and consequential" differences between these terms, but there isn't any evidence of a Wikipedia problem to be solved by drawing the distinction as clearly as you would advocate. The terms themselves also have multiple definitions (including synonymity) in multiple sources, so your selection of two very particular and very different ones, and insistence on those definitions' supremacy, is a POV exercise; this is what is idiosyncratic and wikipolitical about it. It is strongly redolent of WP:BEANS and WP:CREEP, as well as overly prescriptive/proscriptive in an area where such over-control of wording does not seem justified by any extant problems.
 * —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 02:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have a response, but I am going out of town for a week. I'll post when I get back. –  SJL 14:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Understood; had to do likewise back in Oct. myself. I may file an RfC or VPP on this before then, to get more eyes looking at the matter, but would resist the issue being declared closed, one way or the other, until after your return. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * And of course the holidays are here. Keep it open until January? —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 23:17, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * With respect, the reason that you don’t think that this is a problem is that the status quo reflects your own political views. While it is true that many anglophone Canadians are against recognising Quebec as a nation, this is on political and not linguistic grounds (even if it is sometimes rhetorically framed that way).  The case is even more clear with aboriginals, where your statements are in direct contradiction with not only domestic law – the recent legal recognition of the Quebecois as a nation, for example – but longstanding international law as well.  You are right that both groups are Canadian in that their members are citizens of Canada, but this does not make them Canadian nationals by definition. Your contrary assertion using Botswana as an example is just that – an assertion, based on nothing more than your own unresearched interpretation.


 * The belittling reminder that “this isn't Scholarpedia or WikiPoliSciGradStudent” suggests that such assertions are an acceptable basis for information on Wikipedia – that a “general-use reference work written in plain English” is necessarily ‘unacademic’ and should rely on ‘common sense understandings’ instead of scholarly research.


 * I strongly disagree. ‘What most people think’ is not a sufficient condition for factual accuracy (and, as I have already demonstrated, it is not even clear that your position is what most people think in this case). Academic definitions are based on careful research by trained experts, and how you can seriously argue that this is not relevant here is beyond me. –  SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Advice dispute
Regardless of the eventual outcome of this proposal, the advice in it is off-kilter. The shortest way to explain the problem is to give what the Nutshell says, and what it should say:
 * This page in a nutshell: The terms "citizenship" and "nationality" are sometimes used interchangeably, but differ in important ways. In most circumstances, citizenship is easier to determine than nationality, and should be given priority. Nationality should be listed only in addition to citizenship, and only in cases where it both differs from citizenship and is relevant to the article.

versus:


 * This page in a nutshell: The terms "citizenship" and "nationality" are sometimes used interchangeably, but differ in important ways. In most circumstances, citizenship is easier to determine than nationality, and should be given priority. Nationality should be listed only in cases where it both differs from citizenship and is relevant to the article, and in most cases both fields should not be used together.

Rationale: The fact of James Joyce's nominal British citizenship during most or all of his lifetime, because of British occupation of Ireland, is of virtually no importance or interest at all, and he not only thought of himself as Irish, the entire world thought of and still thinks of him as Irish. Including a British citizenship field in the infobox will not only be confusing to most readers, but will spark dispute and editwarring. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 23:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As I explained in an earlier discussion, I don’t find this argument persuasive. – SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

What about ethnicity?
I've been updating artist infoboxes and have always been confused about the nationality field. Some people put the nationality, others put citizenship. No one is certain what to put. For the Rembrandt article, I changed nationality from Netherlands to Dutch (ethnic group) and got reverted. So there's definitely confusion on this. Your proposal solves the problem.

If the infobox offers both nationality and citizenship, people will have to consider the difference between the two, and therefore be much more likely to be consistent on how they fill out the nationality field.

I'm not sure why SMcCandlish is railing against your proposal the way he/she is. The nationality field needs to be clarified; your proposal accomplishes that. --JaGa (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Wait a sec. There's another element to the confusion - ethnicity. When I first started looking at artist infoboxes, one of the first I saw was Caravaggio. It uses ethnicity in the nationality field and hadn't been challenged, so I assumed that was the proper convention. Looking at Albert Einstein, though, I realize the important distinction. I'm sure people will hate this, but the best solution would be to have citizenship, nationality, and ethnicity available. Having citizenship and ethnicity fields would define what nationality is NOT at a glance. --JaGa (talk) 20:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your support! You are right that ethnicity is relevant to this discussion, and I think that it should be handled in the same way that I have proposed for nationality.  Both are subjective identifications which should be indicated only if they are verifiable and relevant to the subject of the article (in the case of Einstein, for example, his Jewish ethnicity played an important role in his politics).


 * (As an aside, the case of people like Caravaggio further complicates things, because ‘Italy’ did not exist until 1861, long after he had died. Massimo d'Azeglio’s famous phrase that “We have made Italy, now we must make Italians” indicates the potential  anachronisms that this can lead to.)


 * Another issue that your contribution raises is the fact that some other infoboxes already have separate fields for citizenship, nationality, and ethnicity. The Einstein article uses Infobox scientist, and it is a good example of how this guideline would be put into practice.  This proposal is for Infobox person under the assumption that it is the ‘master template’ for all infoboxes dealing with persons, and that any fields available in it would be available in more specific templates as well. –  SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting - so Infobox scientist already uses what you propose. SMcCandlish, considering your feelings about this proposal, why aren't you trying to get the Infobox scientist box changed? Are you going to edit the Einstein article, and if not, why not?  The fact that SJL's system is already in place for some Infoboxes - and total chaos has not ensued - makes your arguments less convincing. --JaGa (talk) 08:14, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * So much of this is struck, I'm not sure what to respond to, and am changing the topic heading since it no longer reflects the content. My short-form response is that adding an "enthnicy=" field will just lead to yet more fights.  What someone's so-called ethnicity really "is", is often open to debate, and gets more so over time, generation to generation.  For example I usually describe myself as being of "British" extraction, as a shorthand and so I don't have to go into it, but from my own personal genealogical knowledge, to be accurate I would have to say that my ethnicity is really something like Scottish-English-Apache (no kidding)-Jew-Czech/German (depending on how you want to define Moravia)-Dutch-Irish-German-American.
 * So let's not go there. Such a field would be a virulent vector for POV-pushing, especially for incoming editors with a genealogy background, among whom being 1/64 Latvian, I can tell you from experience, is considered "significant", even though from an encyclopedic perspective it is baldfaced trivia.
 * Also (and I realize you've struck this point, but others are likely to re-raise it so I'll address it anyway) "Dutch-land" is not a nation, ergo "Dutch" is not a nationality, so I don't see any problem with the revert you complained of. The closest thing that would qualify is Germany, Deutchland, and that label would be incorrect in the case you point out, obviously.
 * —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * PS: To elaborate on that a little more clearly, the Netherlands is a nation, and a state. Some Dutch/Nederlander/whatever people consider that to be an ethnicity generally, others see the whole Low Countries and Germany and Austria and Switzland region as a generic "Germanic" ethnicity, and yet others feel much more specific groupings, but which may span more than one nation-state, such as Flemish, to be their ethnicity.  Without having reliable sources about what a particular article subject considers/considered their ethnicity to be, having an ethnicity field is just begging for OR and POV-pushing.  This isn't a problem with "Netherlands".  Whether to use the adjective form is open to question (my informal rede on the matter is that there does seem to generally be a preference for doing so in infoboxes), but in this case it should be "Netherlander" or "Nederlander", not "Dutch" since the issue of whether "the Dutch" really are an ethnic group is quite open to question and dispute by plenty of people, as already noted. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 23:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Another example would be be Eamon de Valera. He was nominally a British citizen for much of his life (and certainly born one) because of British occupation of Ireland.  By ethnicity he was half Spanish and half Irish, and his article mentions this but it is not a defining characteristic" within his notabilty and life accomplishments, so it does not need to be in the infobox.  He was one of the principal leaders of Irish nationalism and eventually the Irish president.  Thus, nationality clearly "Irish" for all encyclopedic intents and purposes.  Any other label would be confusing and absurd. While a correct hypothetical   field might read "UK/Ireland", there really is no point to such a level of nitpickiness and potential confusion, and any reader really, really interested in the politics of legal citizenship can do further reading on the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland during "Dev"'s lifetime and draw their own conclusion. The same sort of issue arises for George Washington and the other American Revolutionaries, all born British citizens.  While SJL is correct that it is easier'' to reliably source citizenship than nationality, so what?  For someone writing an article on me for some reason, it would be much easier, with one letter to the Texas department of vital records, to reliably source my weight at birth, than to reliably source from multiple sources what my job titles have been during my professional career, but we sure know which one of those would actually be encyclopedically relevant.  Ease of sourcing is simply a red herring. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 23:50, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Your arguments do not follow. First, citizenship is preferable in this case not just because it is easier to find sources to verify it, but more importantly because it is a legal status that is unlikely to be contested, and does not privilege a particular political position.  Nationality and ethnicity, on the other hand, are subjective identifications which often are contested.  To return to an example from above, many Canadians see the Quebecois as Canadian nationals, while many Quebecois themselves do not, but nobody contests their status as Canadian citizens.


 * Second, as in the case of James Joyce, the fact that Eamon de Valera was a British citizen is undeniably relevant to his Irish nationalism. The case of George Washington is somewhat different, but why not include both citizenships that he held?  I don’t understand why you think that this information is trivial. –  SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

RfC: Should bio infoboxes distinguish between nationality and citizenship?
I am opening this WP-wide RfC because a discussion between a grand total so far of three editors is insufficient to establish consensus one way or the other on a guideline proposal. Disclaimer: I oppose the creation of new guideline on this issue, for reasons explained above. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 22:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose It is too fine a distinction, with far too much potential for POV abuse. More specific information related to an individuals place of origin, ethnicity, dual-citizenship etc. is better left in article itself and should reflect editor consensus as best as possible, because information there can be placed in context. Awotter (talk) 00:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

What's "Citizenship", "Nationality", "Ethnicity"?
According to the respective WP articles,


 * Citizenship is membership in a political community (originally a city or town but now usually a country) and carries with it rights to political participation; a person having such membership is a citizen.
 * Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
 * An Ethnic group or Ethnicity is a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry. Ethnicity is also defined from the recognition by others as a distinct group and by common cultural, linguistic, religious, behavioural or biological traits.

A person might hold single or multiple citizenships, nationalities, and ethnicities. A person's situation in one or more of these three areas might vary from time to time during his life.

The first two of these might be determinable for a particular subject person by a Wikipedia editor through an examination of available (and, hopefully, citeable) info about the subject's life. A judgement about the third would probably be original research unless the judgement is made by and sourced to a reliable third party outside of Wikipedia. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:10, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As I explained above, nationality and ethnicity should be grouped together as subjective identifications (of the three articles that you refer to, by the way, the nationality article is the least accurate). – SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Disagreements:
 * I disagree that nationality is necessarily subjective. For persons holding U.S. nationality, there is a legal distinction between the two terms. See United States nationality law and.
 * I disagree with your characterization of the the Nationality article as inaccurate. I think that it is correct to describe the term "Nationality" as having connotations extending beyond its meaning as a legal term in U.S. law &mdash; that the term can also mean, as that article says, membership in a cultural/historical group related to political or national identity. Nationality in this sense is often &mdash;but not necessarily&mdash; related to a person's national origin, ancestry, or ethnicity. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Renunciation of citizenship oversimplified
Renunciation of citizenship where required (e.g., sometimes required in order to obtain citizenship by naturalization in a country other than the country or countries of current citizenship) isn't as absolute an issue as is presented in the project page. Generally, the country requiring the renunciation is happy for a renunciation pledge to be made in front of their own officials. A country whose citizenship is being renounced may or may not recognize a renunciation pledge made in such a manner. I've heard such renunciations termed "pro-forma renunciations", and the result may be (commonly is, I think) that the person involved is able to exercise citizenship rights in both countries and is considered to have the duties of citizenship to the governments of both countries. "Citizenship" and "Nationality" may be interchangeable in the foregoing, and may be interchangeable to a greater or lesser extent depending on the particular countries involved.

In the case of the Philippines for example (see Philippine nationality law), prior to the passage of Republic Act No. 9225 (RA9225) the RP probably would not have considered a renunciation of RP citizenship pronounced to satisfy U.S. authorities to be valid, but this quickly became a moot point as RP citizenship was lost once a foreign citizenship was acquired by naturalization. Subsequent to the passage of RA9225 the RP probably does not consider a renunciation of RP citizenship pronounced to satisfy U.S. authorities valid (does not in fact, in cases of which I am aware), and RP citizenship is no longer lost upon acquisition of a foreign citizenship by naturalization.

It has been my observation that Filipinos (my illustrating example, because I have some close experience with this), even when they had lost their RP citizenship by obtaining US naturalization, still considered themselves "Filipino" at least as much as they considered themselves "American", without regard to fine distinctions between "Citizenship", "Nationality", and "Ethnicity". I know of a number of cases where Filipinos who acquired naturalized US citizenship prior to RA9225 (and would thereby have lost their RP citizenship) neglected to inform RP authorities that they had acquired a foreign citizenship by naturalization, retained their RP passports, and continued to represent themselves as RP Citizens & Nationals to RP authorities. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It is true that the proposal does not go into the complexities of renouncing one’s citizenship, but I don’t think that there is any need for it to do so. In this case, the purpose of referring to that process is only to demonstrate that the loss of citizenship does not entail the loss of nationality as I have described it, which, from your comments, I think you would agree with him –  SJL 20:00, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a necessary improvement
As defined above, citizenship, nationality, and ethnicity are very different. For most people, nationality will suffice, and citizenship/ethnicity can be left blank. But in many cases, differences among the three exist and are an important part of the person's history. For those cases we should have the flexibility that SJL's proposal offers.

Anyone who disagrees should edit the Albert Einstein article, or explain to me why only scientists deserve the clarifying fields. --JaGa (talk) 08:24, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm....this discussion is notably missing historical context.
The idea of "citizen" is a western legal concept that emerged in Athens to describe subjects qualified to participate in democracy. It's a legal concept. Both Herodotus and Thucidides describe the qualifications and the obligations of citizens with respect to Athens. The concept has morphed into essentially a legal contract between sovereign democratic states and their subjects. (Non-democratic states tend not to have citizens, but rather, subjects.)

"Nation" is a western political concept used to describe an organizing myth used to provide identity to an otherwise heterogenous group of people. The term can be used to describe groups sharing common familial ties (e.g. the Ibo in Nigeria); common religious beliefs (e.g. Islam), common perceived history, (e.g. Serbs), or people who just happen to live in a specific geographic region but don't necessarily share family ties, values, heritage or religion (United States). "National" identity is a relatively recent historical concept, first emerging in political literature during the Renaissance and Reformation. Previous political organizing concepts were "peoples" and "subjects."

The idea of a "nation-state" (a legal entity to which "citizens" could belong, and citizenship enforced in international law) is most commonly traced to the Peace of Augsberg (1555, which estabished the idea of "cujus regio, ejus religio", i.e. whoever controls the land, controls the religion) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) which ended wars that separated various pricipalities formerly controlled by the Holy Roman Empire into separate, sovereign states, (each proclaiming their own "nation").

I don't think think that the original citation is particularly controversial, given the historical record, (my brief summary is no doubt, bereft of critical nuance, but I believe it accurately depicts the broad outline of the historical record that has led to current conceptions of "citizenship" and "nation").

What this discussion reveals is how far popular political discourse has managed to muddy quite simple and clear definitions of what a citizen is, what a nation is, and what a state is, and they are quite clearly and distictly different concepts arising out of different historical events. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Captbobalou (talk • contribs) 16:45, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree the debate simply highlights how divided people are on an issue that should be fairly simple if kept to a basic level but the idea of states within states and nationalities / "peoples" has really confused things. I think the biggest problem facing wiki on this issue is to do with the United Kingdom. There is no agreed pattern of how people are identified. Be as Scottish, Welsh, Irish, English, British or of mixed parentage. Its just a complete mess, and governments actions on such issues have simply made people even more confused. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.1.88.73 (talk) 00:45, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Historical
Question: is it, as it seems to be, policy to apply nationally retrospectively for the sake of simplicity? For example Sandro Botticelli is listed as having Italian nationality. Problem is he died in 1510 but Florence was only conquered by Piedmont around 1860 with several decades still to go before any Italian nation began to be shaped by the new Italian Kingdom. So essentially, he wasn't Italian. I can understand it is simpler to apply that label in retrospect, I just want to know if that is policy or laziness by editors.- J.Logan`t : 16:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Nationality as a legal status
I'm no expert, but my understanding is that nationality is more often conferred as a legal status than this proposed guideline implies, and is, at least in some cases, more important as a legal status than the proposed guideline suggests. For info on one particular example, see U.S. nationality law.

As I read it, this proposed guideline seeks to present one definition of Nationality as more important and/or more correct than other definitions, and the definition chosen to be emphasized seems not to be the one usually chosen as the first definition to be presented in dictionaries of the English language (I checked that here and here). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:28, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow, major clarification needed
Current status of this project page is horrendous. The definition of nationality here states "Nationality, on the other hand, denotes to the country where an individual has been born. Nationality is got through inheritance from his/her parents or it be called a natural phenomenon." Disregarding the bad English, these two items contradict each other and neither is a proper definition of nationality.

Iago 212 09:56, 1 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Whoops, didn't realise I was flogging a dead horse here. You ain't seen me! Iago 212 10:21, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Non-citizens?
So, does this mean that "non-citizens" are possible? For example: I have a nationality (and thus, a passport), but I do not live in that country. I do not have voting rights in that country, because I do not live there. I do not have voting rights in the new country where I do live (because I am a foreign national). That means, by the definitions proposed here, that I have nationality, but not citizenship. Really???!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.39.47.158 (talk) 14:40, 9 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are non-citizens. Non-citizenship was the most common situation in ancient times.  It is unusual now, but it does happen.   You can read Statelessness for more information.  See also this news report about the Dominican Republic.  Apparently, a few years ago, they decided that if your great-grandparents immigrated to the Dominican Republic without doing the right paperwork a century ago, then anyone in your family that was born after 1929 – including your grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, first cousins, and siblings – weren't citizens any longer.  Tens of thousands of people who had previously been considered citizens were suddenly stateless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Nationality and citizenship are legal concepts
This failed proposal fails to acknowledge that both nationality and citizenship are legal concepts. Nationality is a legal status between a natural person and a state in which each owes duties to the other. Citizenship is a legal status in which one has political rights in a state (such as the right to vote and stand for election). Nowadays, 99% of the time, the two go hand-in-hand, one always comes with the other, and hence the terms are often treated as synonyms in practice. However, there are rare exceptions when one has nationality without citizenship – a good example is the current status of American Samoans, who are US nationals but not US citizens. Another example is the concepts of "British overseas citizens", "British subjects without citizenship" and "British protected persons", all of whom possess some degree of UK nationality but lack full rights of UK citizenship. These distinctions are largely based in history and are slowly dying out. The idea of second-class nationals lacking full citizenship is increasingly viewed as an offensive colonialist anachronism. Anyway, this proposal is completely misinformed in that it thinks that nationality is a non-legal concept and citizenship a legal one, when in actual fact *both* are (distinct but closely related) legal concepts. It is arguing for some other non-legal sense of "nationality" distinct from the legal one, but it doesn't present any evidence from reliable sources to support such a non-legal concept. Mr248 (talk) 10:24, 26 March 2021 (UTC)


 * @Mr248, I agree that there are some errors in this page, but I think it's probably worth mentioning that this subject is usually comes up when someone from the UK wants to say that his "nationality" is English but his "citizenship" is British. The general framework you outline, although the dominant scholarly and legal model, is not the only possible definition of the terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "English" is identified as an ethnicity on the British census. Is your hypothetical user just using "nationality" to mean "ethnicity"? In which case why not use the word "ethnicity" since it will not create any confusion with the legal concept of "nationality". Legally speaking, most people in England are both British nationals and British citizens. (British nationals without citizenship is a complex and obscure topic I won't go into, but very few of those people would actually live in the UK.) Legally there can be no "English nationality" because England is not an independent sovereign state–maybe some day the UK will break up and then "English nationality" will become a legal reality. It is confusing to use a word with a legal meaning when one doesn't intend the legal meaning and isn't making that intention clear. And I think almost everyone committing that confusion is ignorant of the fact the legal meaning exists. Mr248 (talk) 01:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I mean that UK-based editors say that when they fill out various forms, they are asked what their "nationality" is, and the acceptable answers are English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish. That maps pretty well to my understanding of ethnicity (and yours, @Mr248?), but that's apparently not what it says on the forms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Which forms are they talking about? I would love to be see an example of such a form, because I'm sceptical about it. Mr248 (talk) 22:38, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know; in previous conversations, it seems to be a general thing. It is not a universal thing, because the voter registration process uses (used?) "British" as nationality, causing people to complain that it doesn't reflect "all the nations that make up the UK". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That seems to be a proposal to change the form, not an indication the form has actually been changed. And it is a bit of a misguided proposal because they are asking one's nationality/citizenship to determine one's right to vote in UK elections, so it asks you to put down "British" not "Welsh" because the former is relevant to determining whether one has the right to vote, the later isn't. Anyway, this doesn't seem to be any evidence that official government forms in the UK treat "Welsh" or "Scottish" as nationalities, only that some people believe that they ought to. I suspect many of the people advocating that likely have pro-independence sentiment. And I think the answer is that if one thinks that legal Scottish or Welsh nationality ought to exist, it makes sense to campaign for Scottish/Welsh independence, but it makes no sense to suggest the nationality exists in a legal sense prior to independence being achieved–and if one is talking about a non-legal sense it is unclear what exactly that sense is. Mr248 (talk) 02:59, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Since they are called "the Home Nations" rather than the "home non-independent subnational entities", I think we could understand why the people from the Home Nations believe that they are, in fact, nations. You should probably read Nationality of people from the United Kingdom.   If you want to get into it in detail, then there are many discussions in the archives of the various village pumps, and it might  be helpful to talk to someone who knows more about this subject.  Phil Bridger or Iridescent might be able to suggest someone.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I can only add that my experience does not accord with Mr248's. When the word "citizenship" is used it is nearly always a reference to the legal concept, but "nationality" can be, but is often not, such a reference. I would prefer not to take any further part in this discussion apart from making the (to me) obvious point that anything should go in the infobox only if reliable sources agree on it. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:28, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I tried to rewrite this essay to be accurate. Here is what I came up with – User:Mr248/Citizenship and nationality. What do people think of the relative merits of the current essay here to my draft? Mr248 (talk) 13:52, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


 * @Mr248, I know this isn't your focus right now, but I think, that overall, I'd rather that the information in your sandbox came with citations to unimpeachable, international-focused sources, and that it was in the mainspace.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 31 March 2021 (UTC)