Immigration and Citizenship in the United States and Japan

Abstract

Societies differ with respect to how membership in their collectives is acquired and in the degree to which outsiders are allowed to enter and participate in these collectives. The members of some societies are more concerned with the purity of the “Volk,” as many Germans would say, than are the members of other societies. Yet among contemporary advanced industrial societies and in times seemingly incongruously characterized by both movement toward economic globalization and refugee-producing, intrasocietal ethnic cleansing, allowing the immigration of temporary workers and refugees has become fairly common. But for a society to allow persons entry perhaps temporarily to provide needed labor or while life-threatening dangers await them in their societies of origin, is distinct from making them members of this society. Membership in a society or, in the modern world, citizenship tends to be a more closely guarded categorization of persons in virtually all societies, although the importance of having citizenship for accessing certain benefits or avoiding various forms of discrimination may vary across societies.