SEMINAR: Flexible non-citizens? Migrants from China and the citizenship dilemma

Permanent residents from China living in Australia face a dilemma of citizenship. China does not permit dual nationality and so when Chinese citizens apply for naturalization elsewhere they must effectively renounce their Chinese citizenship and thereafter be treated as aliens under Chinese law. As Chinese immigration law has been complicated, piecemeal and unevenly applied, migrants fear that in the future they may be excluded from visiting China altogether. Also, as the administration of the hukou household registration is linked to the administration of borders and migration, former Chinese citizens lose access to the welfare and other social provisions that are tied to their hukou status. This makes longer visits and return or retirement migration much more difficult. Qualitative research conducted in Perth demonstrates that many Chinese migrants choose not to naturalize and instead practice ‘flexible non-citizenship’, as they perceive it grants them, on balance, the greatest accumulation of rights across borders. Yet this approach has drawbacks too. Permanent residents in Australia are excluded from some of the benefits of legal citizenship, are politically disenfranchised, and most importantly are always subject to the threat of deportation. This paper examines the varied strategies employed by families who juggle diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives when engaging with the citizenship dilemma.