Every year, the Brussels School celebrates its freshly graduated students with two academic awards. At our last Congregation ceremony in November 2022, Rebecca Fredrick was awarded the John Groom Prize for best Politics student, while Law student Dicle Demir received the John Macgregor Prize for best student overall. Both have shared some thoughts with us on their dissertation and time at BSIS.
Rebecca Fredrick:
‘My time at BSIS allowed me to explore – from many angles – my academic interest in citizenship, and specifically the meanings individuals attach to it. For my dissertation, I interviewed eleven US citizens who had recently acquired German citizenship under a provision of the German constitution which allows descendants of those who were stripped of their German citizenship by Nazi policy to have their citizenship restored. I sought to answer the question: what motivates individuals to naturalise in this particular way? In doing so, I contribute to a growing body of work on the practice of externally acquired and dual citizenships that asks not why states offer such opportunities, but why individuals take them up on their offers.
I found that participants naturalised for three reasons – typically in combination – which I termed sentimental, instrumental, and security-seeking. The first two motivation types paralleled those found by academics and journalists in previous studies of newly minted dual citizens. However, the third type had not yet been isolated in the literature as a standalone motivation form. I argued that security-seeking motivations are, for this population, strongly influential, and that they are distinct from instrumental and sentimental motivations. To do so, I developed a framework which defined motivation as perceived value. Through examples from my interviews, I demonstrated that for sentimental motivations, value lies in the act of naturalising; for instrumental motivations, in the passport and benefits of citizenship an individual might use to better their current life; and for security-seeking motivations, in the capability to go elsewhere should conditions at home deteriorate. This last category of motivation was regularly linked by participants to recent changes in the US political climate, and informed by their Jewish identities and knowledge of family history.’
Dicle Demir:
‘I am truly honoured to be awarded the John Macgregor prize of BSIS. My year at BSIS was filled with intellectual joy and left me with great memories of all my professors and classmates. Winning this award would not have been possible without the inspiration and guidance I have received from Professor Yutaka Arai-Takahashi.
According to Fawcett, ‘Membership of a majority is based on the freedom to deny that one belongs to a minority, a freedom in the definition of oneself which the member of a minority cannot have!’[1] I have found myself going back to this citation quite often while writing my dissertation, and to this day. It keeps reminding me of the experiences I share with each and every minority person around the world.
My dissertation was an attempt to imagine and conceptualise a minority-sensitive approach to the European Convention on Human Rights. For the most part, it was a very personal journey trying to find legal solutions to the day-to-day problems faced by religious minorities, specifically Alevi people, in Turkey. On the other hand, it made me question the limits of the existing legal frameworks when it comes to defining the multi-dimensional meaning of what or who a minority is. I am glad to have received support for my research from the BSIS community and its thought-provoking environment.’ [1]
Ambassador John Macgregor was Dean of the Brussels School from 2007 to 2009. On his departure, he established a prize to be given to the student with the best taught postgraduate performance on any programme at BSIS. This was following the creation of the prize for the best performance on a taught Politics programme in 2007 by John Groom, the intellectual founder of the Brussels School.
[1] James Fawcett, The International Protection of Minorities 4 (Minority Rights Group Report No. 41, 1979) cited in Geoff Gilbert, ‘The Council of Europe and Minority Rights’ (1996) 18 Hum Rts Q 163.