So far, only few large-scale campaigns have been implemented to promote the naturalization and political participation of immigrants and new citizens in Europe. To assist the process of developing a common model for such campaigns, that can in turn facilitate campaigning and advocacy on a national level, MPG has published a report that compares different citizenship and voting campaigns in Europe.
The report entails short introductions to the chosen countries’ respective citizenship laws and voting rights, as well as mapping out previous initiatives across Europe (Germany, Italy, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain). Citizenship and voting campaigns targeting immigrants in Europe vary greatly in their length, implementation and funding. The report’s case studies are therefore rather diverse, yet also specifically selected in that manner to reflect the broad range of possibilities in this area, ranging from one-day government initiatives to long-term campaigning of civil society organizations. Yet, despite those differences in content as well as social and legal contexts, common success strategies and approaches could be identified that can help design a transversal citizenship campaign “blueprint”.
