One of the many things that I do out of curiosity, and procrastination, is researching other countries. Data that stands out to me are things like passport size histories, saving requirements for long-term recreation (30,000,000 yen or more for Japan), or that education in Norway is free. However, applying for citizenship in another country most often requires the appropriate ministry to research your economic, social, and productive impact in the country. But I've always thought: what actually constitutes as being a productive member of society?
I have worked in a Japanese company before and although I had large input on one particular mobile project, I can't say I was equally productive as what some of the legal team does for applying multiple projects on Apple's app store. I may have worked several hundred thousand pages and tables in my short time there, but nowhere near the amount of work as what the technical department does to keep their servers running. Funny enough, the designers working there were slave-driven by our department and I was pretty sure that our faces were printed out at one point for their dart boards.
When we get down to it, whether we are productive in our societies is almost like an identity crisis of its own: "Are you part of a society? What is this society that you are part of? Where are you in this society? Are you productive in this society? What have you done for this society?". Exploring a particular definition of social productivity is not without considering its relevant roots, politics, with personal and general motives for working. I'm not nationalistic myself but if there's a neutral definition of being a productive member of any and all societies, I'd go for it. At this point, I'm inclined to think that not getting fired at your job makes you productive enough.
As for documentation, I'm probably assuming that embassies and ministries only requires you to list what jobs and services you've done in the country (while they research the rest), which is good enough for us - but it's all just a thought.
