Preliminary Programme

The paper discusses the bureaucratic consequences of German states' emigration regulations in the nineteenth century. Most states
prescribed a formal emigration procedure, which stripped emigrants of
their citizenship when they crossed the border. While this did not
necessarily present a problem in most cases, it did place emigrants in
legal limbo until they acquired a new citizenship - which was usually
possible only after a substantial delay. The paper will deal with the
practical problems that could follow and how they were resolved (or
not), focusing with a particular focus on emigration around 1816 and
after 1848.
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On Estonia’s regaining independence, post-war Russian-speaking immigrants were not acquired Estonian citizenship and they were supposed to go through the naturalization process, if they wanted to obtain Estonian citizenship. In addition to the consequences of this citizenship policy, the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in large-scale stateless population.
After almost 30 years since 1991, there are still a considerable number of stateless persons in Estonia (c.a. 75,000, 6% of the population as of 2018). According to the law on compatriots of Russia, these stateless persons and Russian citizen abroad are the target of the compatriot’s policy of Russia, which is considered as the foreign policy tool within and without Russia. On the other hand, stateless persons and Russian citizens (c.a. 85,000) in Estonia are not necessarily interested in the present compatriot’s policy, although Russia is the motherland for them in terms of culture and language,
In my paper, the entanglement as well as the discrepancy of the state identification and the cultural identity are to be explored, using public opinion research report on the perception of the security in Estonia and the integration monitoring of the Estonian society since 2004. (Show less)

End of the Second World War in Croatia, as well as in the federal Yugoslavia in which Croatia was one of federal units, bring significant challenges for citizenship status of many pre-war citizens. As a rule, Yugoslav communist authorities in its new citizenship law regulations proclaimed principle of legal continuity with pre-war capitalist Yugoslavia and therefore recognized citizenship to all who had citizenship according to the rules valid in the pre-war period. However, some other new citizenship law rules indicated that the authorities applied repressive policy and challenged citizenship status of many pre-war citizens. The authorities of the new state mostly saw these citizens as disloyal and undesirable. In the paper, by using relevant legislation but also archival sources available in the Croatian National Archive, we analyze patterns and practices of deprivation of citizenship in Croatia in the aftermath of the Second World War. Here we mainly focus on members of German ethnic minority (Volksdeutsche) and on the higher ranked members of king's Yugoslav army as well as the collaborators of Nazi Germany.

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The paper deals with the problem of the instrumental treatment of the problem of citizenship as a legal construction and legal institution in Poland within the years 1918-1946. The newly created in 1918 Polish state referred to the political and national myths. The political authorities wanted to shape their society following this myths. In addition, 20 years after the creation of the Polish state, it underwent fundamental border transformation. In such situation, the multi-ethnic and multicultural structure of society become the problem - it did not match the myths. It soon turned out also that there was a fundamental conflict between the assumptions of national mythology and the principles of fundamental rights. Open and direct "repressions" and even the conception of collective guilt and responsibility may have been resisted on the part of the international community. However, the manipulation of citizenship - its granting or withdrawal to the inhabitants of the state within new borders was a seemingly milder and more objective mechanism of adjustment. However, these were appearances, behind which there was a hard and brutal policy of the social and national revolution which was to create a new society. The article analyzes the legal constructions used to grant and withdraw citizenship on the mass scale to achieve these political and ideological goals. (Show less)

Women’s citizenship was an extremely delicate legal question after WWI. Legal codes mostly stipulated that a married woman obtained her husband’s citizenship, whereas no specific course of action was often required for an unmarried woman. As is possible to assume, this put many women, especially those of foreign nationality, in a highly dependent and vulnerable position in areas whose state borders were subject to change after WWI. The paper will address some of these complexities by analyzing the legal position of the numerous single women who migrated to Trieste from other parts of the Habsburg monarchy in search of work (as servants) before the war and then remained in Trieste after the war, when the town became part of Italy. Did they opt for the Italian citizenship or did they decide to remain foreign citizens? If they opted for citizenship, how did the new authorities react to their pleas considering that many of them were from Slovenian or German speaking parts of the former Habsburg monarchy? Was Italian citizenship important to obtain and keep their jobs? Was an advantage to have Italian citizenship – and why? We will try to answer these questions by taking into account various sources especially census data and archival sources (legal documents, official correspondence between the new state and local authorities). (Show less)