Babies, bodies and entitlement: gendered aspects of access to citizenship in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, automatic citizenship for children born in the Republic has been a source of growing debate against a backdrop of increasing immigration and the peace process. In June 2004, the debate culminated in a referendum, opening the way to a constitutional amendment that attaches residence qualifications to the hitherto unfettered entitlement to citizenship available through ius soli. Arguments for the amendment were couched in terms of a threat posed by Third World women having babies in Ireland to obtain residence, and a putative obligation to the EU to harmonise citizenship laws. This article explores how pregnant foreign women’s bodies became a site of perplexity about the borders of the twenty-first century Irish nation. It is therefore suggested that neither the ‘racial state’ theories nor feminist theories of the nation-state account fully for this. On closer inspection, the seemingly sui generis case of the Irish referendum is therefore fruitful in that it demands further reflection in terms of bridging gaps in the existing theory.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsm017
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Policy
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC)
Additional Information: © The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Uncontrolled Keywords: mid-1990s,citizenship,Republic of Irland,immigration
Publication ISSN: 1460-2482
Last Modified: 20 Feb 2024 17:02
Date Deposited: 03 Feb 2010 12:47
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/ (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2007-07
Authors: Garner, Steve J.

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