Lois Harder's Canadian Club: Birthright Citizenship and National Belonging investigates the construction of the Canadian political subject, and therefore our sense of national belonging, through an examination of the laws, norms and social practices that have shaped the notion of citizenship in Canada over the past 75 years.
The aims of this book are twofold. First, the author traces the many processes that have produced the contemporary Canadian citizen. Her analysis mobilizes media coverage, court judgments and public discourses regarding citizenship issues, as well as the federal government's policies from the original Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 to the recent provisions in 2020 for children born abroad via reproductive technologies. Throughout this chronology, Harder emphasizes the central role of the concept of birthright in defining “Canadian-ness” and how it remains the foundational principle by which individuals can legitimately assert membership in the Canadian polity. At the same time, the author examines several situations in which these rules for granting Canadian citizenship have resulted in “lost Canadians”: individuals who have direct ties to Canada and consider themselves to be part of Canadian society but whose citizenship has been blocked or revoked by the government. In these case studies, Harder analyzes the entitlements on which these individuals claim citizenship, allowing her to highlight the hierarchy created by the arbitrary application of birthright among those claiming to be Canadian.
A simultaneous objective of this book is to provide a normative framework for assessing and evaluating the value of birthright citizenship. Harder aims to challenge the legitimacy of citizenship based on random factors, such as geography and time of birth. She argues that citizenship crafted in this way lacks democratic substance because it does not involve a genuine voluntary and participatory commitment of citizens to their political community. Thus, she argues, we fail to recognize the variety of citizenship-granting options that would be more inclusive and require a sincere commitment to the political community.
Harder's argument persuasively demonstrates three key points. First, the concept of a family is a product of political practices that define who parents and children are. As a result, the state's definition of family regulates who is and is not a member of its population. Second, Canadian citizenship has not developed in a way that is neutral for all, but rather has produced and reproduced racial and gender biases that construct political belonging as white and masculine. Third, birthright citizenship is a paradox in a liberal democracy, one that must be abandoned in order to envision a citizenship that is more open and fair and that involves active political participation. The strength of the author's argument is in her mobilization of a wide range of theories and empirical evidence, which consistently and convincingly support her arguments. In particular, the concrete examples she provides of individuals who have been treated unfairly are quite compelling.
In this examination of the conditions under which we exist as a community and what it means to be Canadian, Canadian Club is a profound reflective exercise for all academics interested in Canada's political culture. This book contributes significantly to the critical literature on birthright citizenship (Stevens Reference Stevens1999, Reference Stevens2009; Ellermann, Reference Ellermann2020; Shachar, Reference Shachar2009) by tackling and denouncing the racism and sexism that many individuals have faced in their pursuit of Canadian citizenship. In addition, it enriches research that focuses specifically on the Canadian case (Adamoski et al., Reference Adamoski, Chunn and Menzies2013; Kaplan, Reference Kaplan1993; MacKinnon, Reference MacKinnon2022), as well as addresses citizenship concerns in situations that have received very little national attention, such as maternity tourism and the use of new reproductive technologies.
While Harder's analysis provides a deeper understanding of the processes that have shaped the concept of Canadian citizenship, questions still remain about the precise definition of the Canadian political community. Harder assumes that Canadian identity can be reduced to a single portrait in her outline of the Canadian political subject, but such a global perspective tends to obscure the profound and persistent divisions in Canada's political community (Frye, Reference Frye1982). Being Canadian certainly does not mean the same thing to all Canadian populations. Harder illustrates this idea effectively for immigrant populations but only scratches the surface for First Nations communities and largely fails to explore Quebec's (and francophone communities’) perspective on Canadian citizenship. She posits that citizenship is a focal point for all those invested in democratic life, but how might we reconcile the primacy of citizenship with the specific Canadian contexts that have witnessed hotly contested debates over political membership (Abu-Laban, Reference Abu-Laban2015)?
Nevertheless, Lois Harder's book remains a rich and fertile work that guides readers and political scientists alike in an essential reflection on our future as a political community and the terms in which we wish to inscribe it. Canadian Club emphasizes the conditions necessary for the realization of a more democratic and equitable political project for all. The only remaining action to take is to move forward.
