Culture, National Identity, and Admission to Citizenship

In response to the concern that ethnically diverse immigrants are not being sufficiently integrated into receiving liberal democratic societies, liberal nationalists have offered two specific naturalization policy proposals. The first would require naturalizing immigrants to assimilate the national culture of the receiving society; the second would encourage newcomers to adopt the prevailing civic national identity. This paper rejects these proposals. In contrast to liberal nationalists, I deny that good citizenship presupposes a common culture or civic national identity and I develop a non-nationalist naturalization model that would encourage immigrants to become integrated into liberal democratic societies by participating in their major socio-economic and political institutions and practices.