In the "Room for Debate" section of the New York Times, Prof. Ayelet Shachar has contributed to the discussion "Which Country Did You Say You Were Playing For?" about Olympic citizenship requirements. Her contribution, "Serious Moral Quandaries," (July 27, 2012) picks up on her article "Picking Winners" in the Yale Law Journal. (See also the Nexus magazine article, "Picking Winners", about Shachar's work).
Read the commentary on the New York Times website.
The text of the commentary is also available below.
Serious Moral Quandaries
Ayelet Shachar, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, is the author of "Picking Winners" and the co-author of the forthcoming "Olympic Citizenship."
As Spain’s magnificent victory in Euro 2012 showed, the combination of sports and nationality can galvanize a country’s spirit and reinforce its citizens’ pride. The recent “plastic Brits” debate, however, demonstrates how that same combination can also prove toxic. While many of the foreign-born athletes representing Great Britain in the upcoming Olympic Games are settled immigrants or dual nationals, others were fast-tracked in the visa line specifically because of their athletic prowess.
Examples abound. Prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics, a Canadian-born ice-dancing champion obtained her American citizenship through a special bill signed by the president, making her eligible to represent the United States — a maneuver that landed a silver medal for the U.S. in Turin, Italy. An Ethiopian runner was recruited and quickly granted citizenship by Bahrain’s government, and went on to win gold on the world track stage. In anticipation of London 2012, many other nationality switches were approved, some only 10 days ago. Countries that covet elite athletes appear to be pulling all the stops, offering fast-tracked membership grants in exchange for a whiff of gold. Call it the rise of Olympic citizenship.
Olympic citizenship without a doubt enhances the freedom of mobility for those with exceptional talent, yet there are serious moral quandaries. Citizenship, an institution steeped in notions of equality, identity, loyalty, perhaps even sacrifice, is being turned into a recruitment tool used to bolster a nation’s standing relative to its competitors. Concerns then arise with respect to the country Olympic athletes have left behind, other athletes in the country they are coming into, and the erosion of fair play among competing nations.
This is a collective action problem that calls for a collective response: it is in the interest of each competing nation to engage in passport swaps, but it is to the detriment of the whole system of fair play and sportsmanship to permit such unregulated and aggressive talent “poaching.” Instead of preaching either the antimobility stance that advocates banning switches of allegiance, or the antistatist position that calls for demolishing the citizenship-based structure of eligibility for participation in the Olympics, greater promise lies in coordinated international responses.
For Olympic athletes, gaining the legal status of a citizen is, as per the Olympic Charter, a precondition for representing a new country. In this way, the bestowal of a fresh passport becomes crucial for harnessing an athlete’s potential as a boon and boost to the recruiting nation. International sports bodies cannot infringe on a sovereign country's right to grant citizenship. What they can do is tighten up the eligibility rules in order to minimize the use and abuse of citizenship as a recruitment tool in the worldwide hunt for triumph.
