Citizenship and borders : Irish nationality law and Northern Ireland

Depending on its underlying principles and scope of application, citizenship law can impact on territorial borders in varying ways, ranging from their reinforcement to their active subversion. In this paper I develop a schema of possible relationships between borders and four common principles of citizenship with the aim of assessing their compatibility. I then apply this schema to pre-1998 Irish citizenship law to illustrate an instance of subversion of a territorial border. While highly distinctive in Europe, the formerly irredentist nature of Irish citizenship law calls attention to the potential for conflict between certain citizenship criteria and territorial boundaries, a potential which has increased in recent decades with the reform of citizenship regimes
in Central and Eastern Europe.