Citizenship and the Right to Leave

The right to leave one's country, in conjunction with the right to change one's nationality, both of which are proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), are examined in historical and philosophical perspective and with special reference to their implications for a theory of citizenship. These rights are novel elements in enumerations of fundamental rights, at variance with traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and with the practice of many slates, past and present. They are also rights which have not frequently been defended, and have often been denied, by political and legal philosophers, many of whom have defended stronger ties of allegiance and obligations between the citizen and the state than is evidently implied by the human rights doctrine. These rights are clearly grounded in basic liberal values of individual liberty and voluntarism; however, they represent extensions of these values beyond what was usually acknowledged in the classical liberal tradition.