The Meaning of Nationality in International Law

Jun 17, 2025 0

In international law, nationality is a legal identification establishing a person as a subject, a national, of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state against other states.

A world map showing the prevalence of birthright citizenship (jus soli). Countries in blue grant unconditional birthright citizenship; countries in orange grant conditional birthright citizenship; countries in green do not grant birthright citizenship.

The rights and duties of nationals vary from state to state and are often complemented by citizenship law, in some contexts to the point where citizenship is synonymous with nationality. However, nationality differs technically and legally from citizenship, which is a different legal relationship between a person and a country. The noun "national" can include both citizens and non-citizens.

The most common distinguishing feature of citizenship is that citizens have the right to participate in the political life of the state, such as by voting or standing for election.

Acquiring Nationality

The general process of acquiring nationality is called naturalization. Each state determines in its nationality law the conditions (statute) under which it will recognize persons as its nationals, and the conditions under which that status will be withdrawn. A person can be recognized or granted nationality on a number of bases.

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Nationality by family (jus sanguinis): If one or both of a person's parents are citizens of a given state, then the person may have the right to be a citizen of that state as well. Formerly this might only have applied through the paternal line, but sex equality became common since the late twentieth century. Where jus sanguinis holds, a person born outside a country, one or both of whose parents are citizens of the country, is also a citizen.
Nationality by birth (jus soli): Some people are automatically nationals of the state in which they are born. This form of citizenship originated in England, where those who were born within the realm were subjects of the monarch (a concept pre-dating that of citizenship in England) and is common in common law countries.
Nationality by marriage (jus matrimonii): Many countries fast-track naturalization based on the marriage of a person to a citizen. Countries that are destinations for such immigration often have regulations to try to detect sham marriages, where a citizen marries a non-citizen typically for payment, without them having the intention of living together.
Naturalization: States normally grant nationality to people who have entered the country legally and been granted a permit to stay, or been granted political asylum, and also lived there for a specified period. In some countries, naturalization is subject to conditions which may include passing a test demonstrating reasonable knowledge of the language or way of life of the host country, good conduct (no serious criminal record), and moral character (such as drunkenness, or gambling, or an understanding of the nature of drunkenness, or gambling) vowing allegiance to their new state or its ruler and renouncing their prior citizenship.
Nationality by investment or economic citizenship: Wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport. Whilst legitimate and usually limited in quota, the schemes are controversial.

Some states (United Kingdom, Canada) limit the right to citizenship by descent to a certain number of generations born outside the state; others (Germany, Ireland, Switzerland) grant citizenship only if each new generation is registered with the relevant foreign mission within a specified deadline; while others (Italy, for example) have no limitation on the number of generations born abroad who can claim citizenship of their ancestors' country.

Many countries (United Kingdom, Germany, United States, Canada) allow citizenship by marriage only if the foreign spouse is a permanent resident of the country in which citizenship is sought; others (Switzerland, Luxembourg) allow foreign spouses of expatriate citizens to obtain citizenship after a certain period of marriage, and sometimes also subject to language skills and proof of cultural integration.

Rights and Responsibilities

Nationals normally have the right to enter or return to the country they belong to. Passports are issued to nationals of a state, rather than only to citizens, because a passport is a travel document used to enter the country.

Conceptually citizenship and nationality are different dimensions of state membership. Citizenship is focused on the internal political life of the state and nationality is the dimension of state membership in international law.

Historically, the most significant difference between a national and a citizen is that the citizen has the right to vote for elected officials, and the right to be elected. Until the 19th and 20th centuries, it was typical for only a certain percentage of people who belonged to the state to be considered as full citizens. In the past, a number of people were excluded from citizenship on the basis of sex, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, religion, and other factors.

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Variations in Nationality

Even if the nationality law classifies people with the same nationality on paper (de jure), the right conferred can be different according to the place of birth or residence, creating different de facto classes of nationality, sometimes with different passports as well.

For example, although Chinese nationality law operates uniformly in China, including Hong Kong and Macau SARs, with all Chinese nationals classified the same under the nationality law, in reality local laws, in mainland and also in the SARs, govern the right of Chinese nationals in their respective territories which give vastly different rights, including different passports, to Chinese nationals according to their birthplace or residence place, effectively making a distinction between Chinese national of mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, both domestically and internationally.

Nationality vs. Ethnicity

Nationality is sometimes used simply as an alternative word for ethnicity or national origin, just as some people assume that citizenship and nationality are identical. In some countries, the cognate word for nationality in local language may be understood as a synonym of ethnicity or as an identifier of cultural and family-based self-determination, rather than on relations with a state or current government.

In the context of former Soviet Union and former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, "nationality" is often used as translation of the Russian nacional'nost' and Serbo-Croatian narodnost, which were the terms used in those countries for ethnic groups and local affiliations within the member states of the federation.

In the Soviet Union, more than 100 such groups were formally recognized. Membership in these groups was identified on Soviet internal passports, and recorded in censuses in both the USSR and Yugoslavia.

A Soviet birth certificate, in which the nacional'nost' of both parents (here both Jewish) was recorded.

Similarly, the term nationalities of China refers to ethnic and cultural groups in China.

Spain is one nation, made up of nationalities, which are not politically recognized as nations (state), but can be considered smaller nations within the Spanish nation.

Statelessness

Statelessness is the condition in which an individual has no formal or protective relationship with any state.

There are various reasons why a person can become stateless. This might occur, for example, if a person's parents are nationals of separate countries, and the mother's country rejects all offspring of mothers married to foreign fathers, but the father's country rejects all offspring born to foreign mothers.

Another stateless situation arises when a person holds a travel document (passport) which recognizes the bearer as having the nationality of a "state" which is not internationally recognized, has no entry into the International Organization for Standardization's country list, is not a member of the United Nations, etc.

Some countries (like Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia) can also remove one's citizenship; the reasons for removal can be fraud and/or security issues.

A person can become stateless because of administrative reasons.

International Declarations and Conventions

Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to nationality. As such nationality in international law can be called and understood as citizenship, or more generally as subject or belonging to a sovereign state, and not as ethnicity.

To address statelessness, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to a nationality", and "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality", even though, by international custom and conventions, it is the right of each state to determine who its nationals are.

Such determinations are part of nationality law. In some cases, determinations of nationality are also governed by public international lawâ€”for example, by treaties on statelessness or the European Convention on Nationality. For when a person lacks nationality, globally only 23 countries have established dedicated statelessness determination procedures.

Several international declarations and conventions address nationality rights:

African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (art. )
American Convention on Human Rights (art. )
American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (art. )
Arab Charter on Human Rights (art. )
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (art. )
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (art. )
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (art. )
Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. )
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (art. )
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) (art. )
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. )

Dual Nationality

Dual nationality was considered a problem that caused a conflict between states and sometimes imposed mutually exclusive requirements on affected people, such as simultaneously serving in two countries' military forces. Through the middle of the 20th century, many international agreements were focused on reducing the possibility of dual nationality.

In the case of dual nationality, the states may determine the most effective nationality for the person, to determine which state's laws are the most relevant.

However, since the Nottebohm case, other states are only required to respect the claim(s) by a state to protect an alleged national if the nationality is based on a true social bond.

National Identity

National identity is a person's subjective sense of belonging to one state or to one nation. A person may be a national of a state, in the sense of being its citizen, without subjectively or emotionally feeling a part of that state, for example a migrant may identify with their ancestral and/or religious background rather than with the state of which they are citizens. Conversely, a person may feel that he belongs to one state without having any legal relationship to it.