Citizenship in Times of Terror

Legally, citizenship may be labelled as a secure status, if not the most secure status a person can enjoy. This is well illustrated when contrasting citizenship with other types of legal statuses that are essentially related to or based on immigration: foreigner, refugee, irregular migrant etc. This paper interrogates the received wisdom about citizenship as a secure and stable legal status by analysing the repeated changes operated by the UK regarding the legal rules on loss of citizenship. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the UK rules on citizenship deprivation have been amended several times with the aim of getting rid of citizens who engage in activities deemed undesirable by the executive. The latest change to the law was adopted in 2014 and allows for loss of citizenship leading to statelessness where the person concerned has acquired UK citizenship by naturalisation. Up to now, based on case law and public information available about the cases in which the UK executive has issued citizenship deprivation orders, these activities relate to terrorism and are part of a discourse about security. To this end, the attempt to get rid of dangerous citizens can be read as a security project aimed at creating safe and loyal citizens. However, the security aspect of citizenship deprivation is also coupled with a discourse that presents citizenship as a privilege to be bestowed by the executive, and not as a legal status. Although not a new trope in governmental discourses about membership and identity, presenting citizenship as a privilege raises some fundamental questions about the relationship between the state and the citizen and the manner in which citizens should be treated when they no longer conform to certain ideals about membership.