Citizenship 2.0 by Yossi Harpaz

Author:Yossi Harpaz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Family Dynamics

The decision to apply for EU citizenship always involves a whole circle of relatives: not just the immigrant parent or grandparent (if they are alive), but also the children of citizenship applicants, their siblings, and often their spouses. The opportunities provided by EU citizenship are mainly relevant to the younger generation. And, indeed, it is often young people in their twenties and thirties who typically initiate applications after learning about that possibility from their friends or from the media. In other cases, second-generation parents initiate the application in order to improve their children’s life prospects. Citizenship lawyers report that an average application “produces” three to five citizens from two or three generations. Applying for a European passport is a family project governed—at least in part—by family logic.

Before going further, I will briefly clarify the generational structure of the Ashkenazi family in Israel, as it was understood by respondents and broader society. Israelis typically refer to a trigenerational family structure. The “first generation” includes individuals who were born in Europe around the years 1910–1930 and immigrated between the 1920s and 1960s. The “second generation,” or the parent generation, were born between 1940 and 1960, most of them in Israel and some in Europe. The Ashkenazi “third generation” were born in Israel between 1970 and 1990. At first sight, these terms appear similar to those used in other immigration countries (as in “second-generation immigrants”). In fact, the generational count does not refer to immigration to Israel; instead, the “zero hour” they refer to is the Holocaust. It appears that this entire generational structure is extrapolated from the expression “second generation to the Holocaust,” (Dor Sheni LaShoah) which originated in the psychotherapeutic discourse about the transmission of trauma.35

Most applications followed a typical generational division of labor: first-generation immigrant grandparents provide the basis for eligibility, but (being dead or very old) take no part in the application; and third-generation grandchildren often initiate the procedure, but do not actively contribute to it. The parent generation, in their fifties and sixties, are the ones who carry out the application and provide the necessary labor and expenses. This bureaucratic journey is often undertaken in collaboration with siblings, who also split the costs between them.

In spite of the work they put into obtaining citizenship, second-generation dual citizens typically do not derive any personal benefit from it. Most of them never even use their European passports for international travel. Thus, the primary motive of second-generation parents to apply for citizenship is the feeling that it is “good for the family.” For example, fifty-eight-year old Shoshana said: “I only [obtained Hungarian citizenship] so that my children will have a passport. I have no intention of using it. Actually, I am ashamed to have a Hungarian passport. [I am ashamed] because my mother would turn in her grave if she knew.… She left Hungary at eighteen and never wanted to talk or visit or hear from them again.”

While not all second-generation dual citizens held such negative views of their countries of citizenship, the sentiment of shame expressed by Shoshana is highly typical of that generation.

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