Governing global migration is one of the most pressing issues of our time. With more than 250 million international immigrants, the question of how citizenship should be distributed has become controversial, morally and politically. Traditionally, international law has not regulated nationality law; naturalization requirements remain the last stronghold of national sovereignty. This project advances the establishment of a new subfield in public international law—International Citizenship Law (ICIL)—which would govern nationality law. It asks a critical and timely question: What should be the international norms in setting up requirements for naturalization and, more broadly, for granting citizenship?

In order to address this question, the project has six objectives: [1] to investigate the history of naturalization and what it can teach us about 21st-century challenges; [2] to identify the recent legal developments and establish the most up-to-date legal standards in the field of naturalization law that, taken together, may form the basis for ICIL; [3] to set out the theoretical foundations and justifications for the establishment of ICIL; [4] to analyze the normative and structural implications derived from an ICIL approach for future citizenship regimes; [5] to examine how new technologies can and should remodel the way citizenship is globally governed; and [6] to explore the interrelationship between ICIL, global migration, and collective identity.

The project is structured around three core research areas: [1] Global Citizenship Technology (CitTech); [2] Global Citizenship Compact (GCC); [3] Cities, Membership and Migration (CMM).