The Annexation of Populations: A New State Strategy, 2017-2021

Wrighton, Sam J (2021). The Annexation of Populations: A New State Strategy, 2017-2021. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-854598

This project aims to analyse the extraterritorial naturalisation practices of Russia and Hungary to determine the states’ motivation and the domestic and international consequences of the policies. At the individual level, it remains a state’s legal prerogative to confer citizenship upon whomever it wishes consensually. When done to an extraterritorial collective, the practice can and has caused disputes between states. Russian and Hungarian state officials defend the practice by arguing the conferral of citizenship is a legal manifestation of a responsibility to privilege co-nationals, wherever they may reside. While this position cannot be entirely dismissed, it is argued that it lacks sufficient explanatory power and that strategic and instrumental motivations are fundamental. Research in International Relations has so far neglected to investigate citizenship policies from a strategic foreign policy perspective, a shortcoming this thesis seeks to address. Using a case study qualitative research design involving fifty-two interviews with political stakeholders and an official state discourse analysis, it shows that Russia and Hungary have made international and domestic gains by naturalising targeted populations in their contiguous states, which can be metaphorically described as an 'annexation of populations'. The official state discourse from the leaders Russia and Hungary relating to external populations and territory are found to exhibit similarities. This project offers an emotive analogue that the extraterritorial naturalisations are justified as a means to rectify perceived injustices at historical loses caused by external rivals. The significance of this study is that it informs our theoretical understandings of key concepts of International Relations by focussing on the implications of extraterritorial naturalization on sovereign territorial integrity, the nation, (dual) citizenship and will interest constructivists and realists and those interested by international law.

Data description (abstract)

The empirical data included here was gathered to address the research question, why do Russia and Hungary conduct extraterritorial naturalisations? Two forms of data are included. The first set of data takes the form of transcripts from interviews conducted with 52 policymakers and stakeholders relevant to the Russian and Hungarian extraterritorial naturalisation practices during two fieldwork trips, one in 2017 and one in 2019. These interviews were sourced by contacting the participant through their official email or postal addresses. One interview was conducted with a citizen via online video conferencing software. This participant was sourced from a flyer placed in a university in Tallinn, Estonia. These interviews were conducted in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, and Georgia. All of these regions were relevant to the subject of the research project. The second set of data includes transcripts from almost all publicly available statements made by the Presidents of Russia (between 2000 and 2018), Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, and the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán (between 2014 and 2018). These transcripts were obtained by conducting a 'web scrape' using computer software Python, from the websites of the Kremlin and the Hungarian government respectively. The relevant documentation and coding is included in the folder.

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