Citizenship tests have been understood as part of the wider patterns of governing migration in recent years. They suggest an example of border tightening amidst a discourse of fear over 'high' levels of migration, risk to projects of cultural homogeneity and the security climate of the 'war on terror'. In this sense they are understood as another totem of the 'death' of multiculturalism and often presented as illberal strategies of cultural assimilation. I want to suggest that whilst the notion of testing is built out of a certain set of fears about risk and danger in western democracies what they actually present is an explicitly liberal strategy of governing. This is presented in a language of 'inclusion', cultural 'tolerance', and civic renewal which must be taken seriously. In suggesting this I want to propose that 'testing' is both a mechanism of disciplinary power but also a strategy of empowerment and self-betterment. In this sense the test represents a fascinating nexus between neo-liberal ideas of governing and concerns regarding (in)security. Using the UK as an empirical example I argue that studying the test in this way offers up vital questions about how community and political membership has been shaped in late modernity. This will take into account the way governing mentalities have acted upon, in my view, a new political subject of migration.
