Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.

Chapter 9 deals specifically with the way in which the war affected the notions and practices of citizenship. It does so by switching the attention from enemy aliens to citizens of enemy origins. The chapter concentrates firstly on an analysis and discussion of the naturalization policies adopted by the various belligerent countries during the First World War. It then examines the spread of denaturalization statutes across Europe and the emergence of statelessness, concentrating both on state attitudes and public opinion and on the impact of naturalization and denaturalization policies on people of enemy origin. It also looks past the end of the war at the impact of those policies on interwar developments in inclusion and exclusion. The war played a crucial role in stabilizing differences between citizens and aliens and making them starker. It also imposed markers of identity (nationality, language, religion, ethnicity, “race”) on people, often regardless of their will or choice. In the name of military necessity and national security, authorities were willing to investigate origins and parentage or kinship, religion, language and all the markers that could indicate disloyalty to the nation in arms, thus implementing rigid notions of citizenship/subjecthood.

This chapter opens the third section of the book on the aftermath of the war. It addresses the end of the war and its many legacies. It starts with the armistice, and then considers the discussion about enemy aliens during the peace conference; it also explores the treaties that ended the war and their consequences for aliens, citizenship and property rights. It continues with the signing of all the final treaties, the emptying of the concentration camps and the lifting of the provisions on foreign movements, the agreement that regulated restitution or liquidation of assets, and the final exchange of populations. The chapter covers the period up to the late 1920s and deals with the transition from the state of emergency to peace, the resumption of naturalization procedures, new rules on borders and migration, new citizenship regimes that emerged from the war in both victorious and defeated countries as well as in the new successor states, and mass denaturalization and statelessness as a consequence of the emergence of new political regimes (such as the Soviet Union) or population exchange. It investigates the impact of special legislation on alien and enemy aliens on policies of migration control and explores the debate among jurists about the many violations of the conventions and human rights and the failed attempts at writing a new convention on enemy aliens.

This chapter examines official attitudes toward aliens in peacetime during the nineteenth century by focusing first of all on their rights in a period characterized by sovereignty, nation-building, solidification of borders and the issue and reform of citizenship laws on the one hand, and on the emergence of globalization, migration and the construction of an international society on the other. The chapter delves into the debates on the right of asylum, expulsion, expatriation, and examines early policies of migration control and the dilemma of reconciling rights and freedom of movement with emerging anti-alienism that precipitated into violence. The second part of the chapter concentrates on citizenship as a legal device, exploring first of all practices of collective acquisition of citizenship triggered by annexations of territories, creation of new nation-states, plebiscites and option regimes incorporated in international treaties. It then deals with individual acquisition and loss of citizenship (naturalization and denaturalization), paying particular attention to the gender dimension of citizenship, conscription, dual citizenship and the ethnic shift in citizenship practices and notions that began to emerge at the turn of the century.