Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
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November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
62
better”, she said. “This is only a piece of paper”. And when she said that to me, I
calmed down quite a bit. “That’s right”, I thought, “this is really only a piece of
paper”’.
Calling Norwegian citizenship (passport) a ‘piece of paper’ often contrasts with the
emotional ties which informants attach to Lithuanian citizenship. A 40-years-old man remarked:
‘I for one will never waive my Lithuanian citizenship. If the Seimas legalises dual
citizenship, then I’ll think again, but not in other circumstances. [...] When you
change your passport, you just cut all those ancestral ties, as they say; all your bonds
with Lithuania. This happens when you change your passport to a red Norwegian
one’.
And you’d rather not do that?
‘No. No, stop kidding me. My mother is there and my sisters, all three of them; and
everything else. [...] you dream at night, certain images appear and you remember
something and feel shivers inside you. I can’t say anything like that about Norway
yet’.
However, respondents indicated that Lithuanian and Norwegian citizenship can easily be
swapped. A 40-years-old woman, for example, gave the following explanation for her decision to
change from Lithuanian to Norwegian citizenship: ‘From a practical point of view, I’m much
better off having this passport in every respect. [...] My only comfort is the fact that, as I found
out, we can always reclaim our Lithuanian citizenship if we want or need it, or if change our
minds. That’s because we meet all the relevant criteria’. She means that she will be able to
reclaim Lithuanian citizenship under the criterion of Lithuanian origin (see Daukšas 2007),
should she ever decide to waive Norwegian citizenship. In this respect, one can manipulate
citizenship: it is not irreversible and can be strategically and rationally changed if deemed
necessary. At the same time, citizenship is seen as a bond linking one with Lithuania and
migrants do not hasten to waive it.
The picture becomes a little more complicated when we turn to the matter of children who
grew up in Norway and identify themselves as Norwegians.
11
One such informant said that she is
Norwegian, without a shadow of a doubt. She claimed Norwegian citizenship two years ago and
when asked why, she said:
‘Because I wanted it. I don’t know – it just felt like a natural thing to do’.
11
During the research, we spoke to three adults who grew up in Norway after leaving Lithuania at pre-
school age and spending all their subsequent lives in Norway. One of the respondents clearly identified
herself as a Norwegian, while the other two strongly consider themselves Lithuanians despite intending to
claim Norwegian citizenship.
