Politics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in governments, policies, and political processes. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Some countries make naturalization conditional upon the renunciation of other citizenship, due to a prohibition of multiple citizenship. This poses a problem when someone is a national of a country that does not allow renunciation of citizenship under any circumstances.
What is the rationale for a country to not permit renunciation of citizenship, even when nationals acquire the citizenship of another country?
A quick search through scholarly literature (limited to articles not behind a paywall) turned up a few reasons:
Two reasons why states choose to limit renunciation of citizenship are insularity and ethnic selection. In a cross-national statistical analysis [1], political scientists reduced a variety of citizenship policy variables to just two dimensions. Their analysis provided two explanations for a state to limit renunciation of citizenship:
There may also be a trend toward plural citizenship, which reduces any motivation to allow citizens to renounce citizenship [2]. The legal reason to allow a citizen to renounce their citizenship is because historically, mono-citizenship (citizenship in only one country at a time) was the norm. A citizen would have to renounce their citizenship before they could become citizens of another country. In this setting, a clear way to renounce citizenship is important.
Increasingly plural-citizenship is becoming more normal. In a world where a person can be a citizen of more than one country at once, countries do not have a strong motivation to provide a mechanism to renounce citizenship. There is simply no business-case for it because people are increasingly able to gain additional citizenships without renouncing their original one.
[1] Vink, Maarten Peter, and Rainer Bauböck. 2013. “Citizenship configurations: Analysing the multiple purposes of citizenship regimes in Europe.” Comparative European Politics 11(5): 621–48. http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/media/cep201314a.pdf.
[2] Spiro, Peter J. 2010. "Dual citizenship as a human right." International Journal of Constitutional Law 8(1): 111-130. https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/8/1/111/682643/Dual-citizenship-as-human-right
The case I know is not addressed (not even in general) by the other answers. The case is that of Argentina, where the courts decided a few years ago that renunciation of citizenship is unconstitutional (link in Spanish, I don't think there's an official English version of this).
Explicitly, the judges declared that for someone who was born in Argentina being an Argentinean citizen is "a human right that cannot be renounced". In the process, they forced two persons who wanted to emigrate to Lithuania to stay in Argentina. A curious view of "human rights".
Usually, countries that disallow renunciation of citizenship do not prohibit it outright. But rather, the citizen needs to meet certain criteria before renunciation.
I'll list some examples below:
Singapore -- Male citizens of Singapore are required to serve National Service (military service) for 2 years before they can renounce their citizenship.
Turkey -- Similarly, one has to pay an exception fee or obtain a deferment should one want to renounce Turkish citizenship without completing the compulsory military service.
So, as seen in the examples, countries usually don't prohibit renunciation of citizenship but citizens have to fulfil some criteria before they can renounce their citizenship (e.g., completing compulsory military service).
The purpose of citizenship is to control people. Not allowing people to renounce their citizenship is a way governments try to control people outside their borders, and force them to join the military.
If a person acts in a way that the government does not like or tries to avoid military service, the government can arrest that person if their return (in order to force them to join the military) or use the threat of arrest to exile that person.
If a person can renounce their citizenship it is harder to punish that person for actions outside the country or force them to join the military.
One reason someone could argue against allowing renunciation of citizenship is to prevent citizens being coerced into giving up their citizenship. That is, as an explicit counter measure to make requirements to give up citizenship as a precondition for taking on a new one impossible.
To give an example, person X might be of single nationality B, but born in country A, to a family which cultivates its heritage from country B. There are strong incentives to take on A's citizenship (democracy/participation, protection from deportation, etc.), but A doesn't allow multiple nationalities. Now if B allows renunciation of citizenship, external factors practically force X to renunciate B's citizenship. But if B blanket disallows renunciation of citizenship, free and democratic state A can't legally hold that against X, and will allow them to take on A's citizenship anyway, maybe dependent on some conditions (like never using their second citizenship ever again) that will be impossible to enforce in most cases.
In general, a country which wants to give its citizens maximum freedom can disallow renunciating citizenship and support its citizens in ignoring other country's single citizenship laws to enable their citizens to live in other countries for extended periods of time without having to lose part of their identity or practical advantages granted to those of the original citizenship.
A second related motivation such a policy could have is to encourage multi-citizenships with the goal of eroding national borders in general, promoting cross country freedom of movement and over multiple generations fostering more and more of an international mindset like can already be found in some EU 'citizens' today to make sure two countries having exchanged enough citizens could never go to war with each other ever again.
