Ayelet Shachar

The border is one of the most urgent issues of our times. We tend to think of a border as a static line, but recent bordering techniques have broken away from the map, as governments have developed legal tools to limit the rights of migrants before and after they enter a country’s territory. The consequent detachment of state power from any fixed geographical marker has created a new paradigm: the shifting border, an adjustable legal construct untethered in space. This transformation upsets our assumptions about waning sovereignty, while also revealing the limits of the populist push toward border-fortification. At the same time, it presents a tremendous opportunity to rethink states’ responsibilities to migrants. This book proposes a new, functional approach to human mobility and access to membership in a world where borders, like people, have the capacity to move.

The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state.In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

Is it possible for the state simultaneously to respect deep cultural differences and to protect the hard-won citizenship rights of vulnerable group members, particularly women? This book argues that it is not only theoretically needed, but also institutionally feasible. Rejecting prevalent normative and legal solutions to this ‘paradox of multicultural vulnerability’, Multicultural Jurisdictions develops a powerful argument for enhancement of the jurisdictional autonomy of religious and cultural minorities while at the same time providing viable legal-institutional solutions to the problem of sanctioned intra-group rights violation. This new ‘joint governance’ approach is guided by an innovative principle that strives for the reduction of injustice between minority groups and the wider society, together with the enhancement of justice within them. This book will interest students of political and social theory, law, religion, institutional design, as well as cultural and gender studies.

Is it possible for the state simultaneously to respect deep cultural differences and to protect the hard-won citizenship rights of vulnerable group members, particularly women? This 2001 book argues that it is not only theoretically needed, but also institutionally feasible. Rejecting prevalent normative and legal solutions to this 'paradox of multicultural vulnerability', Multicultural Jurisdictions develops a powerful argument for enhancement of the jurisdictional autonomy of religious and cultural minorities while at the same time providing viable legal-institutional solutions to the problem of sanctioned intra-group rights violation. This new 'joint governance' approach is guided by an innovative principle that strives for the reduction of injustice between minority groups and the wider society, together with the enhancement of justice within them. This book will interest students of political and social theory, law, religion, institutional design, as well as cultural and gender studies.