Coloniality, Belonging and Citizenship Deprivation in the UK: Exploring Judicial Responses
| DOI | 10.1177/09646639211044294 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Coloniality, Belonging and
Citizenship Deprivation in
the UK: Exploring Judicial
Responses
Zainab Batul Naqvi
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Abstract
In this paper, I interrogate the English case law on citizenship deprivation and its effects
on the migrant and diasporic communities most affected by it from a critical postcolonial
perspective. I explore how it forms part of state responses to national security that are
rooted in racist imperialist ideologies. These underpinnings are ignored in law because
such responses are supposedly reserved for exceptional circumstances. This has led to a
lack of critical awareness of the wider damage they cause. The damage caused is com-
pounded by the ways that citizenship deprivation constitutes a technology of the politics
of belonging. It orientalises people, “othering”and dividing them into those who belong
and those who do not based on their differences. This approach leaves racialised and
minoritised citizens more vulnerable to losing their citizenship which is a deliberate
form of control reminiscent of the longstanding behaviour of colonialist imperialists.
Keywords
Nationality, citizenship deprivation, critical postcolonial studies, politics of belonging,
Introduction
How are migrant and diasporic communities in the UK affected by the state’sincreas-
ing use of citizenship deprivation? The process by which an individual has their
citizenship involuntarily removed has attracted media attention due to the discovery
Corresponding author:
Zainab Batul Naqvi, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Email: zainab.naqvi@dmu.ac.uk
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2022, Vol. 31(4) 515–534
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09646639211044294
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of Shamima Begum –one of the so-called “jihadi brides”of Da’eshinaSyrian
refugee camp. Shamima was 15 years old when she left the UK to join Da’esh.
During an interview, she expressed her desire to return to the UK. The response
was to strip her of her British citizenship because supporting a terrorist organisation
abroad is unforgivable. What does this mean for Shamima? And for British citizens
who fall foul of the British Nationality Act 1981 which provides for citizenship
deprivation?
Whilst there is a developing base of literature around citizenship deprivation, much of
this is focussed on national security and terrorism (e.g. Choudhury, 2017; Kapoor and
Narkowicz, 2019a; Van Waas and Jaghai, 2018). Further scholarship considers the inter-
sections with discrimination and statelessness in law and human rights (Mantu, 2014;
Merry, 2017; Prabhat, 2016a; Zedner, 2016). This paper shares the findings from a
wider critical postcolonial examination of citizenship deprivation in law. Whilst legal
approaches to citizenship and its removal by the state are not specifically attributed to
British colonialism, I show that contemporary approaches and uses of this are part of a
framework rooted in coloniality or the ongoing mass exploitation and domination of
racialised and minoritised people established through colonial encounters. There is a
lack of deeper engagement with the historical context around this practice from a critical
perspective in law
1
without which we risk overlooking the influence colonial-linked
migration has on policies today (Bhambra, 2015). This is vital to better understanding
how immigration law affects communities and their belonging. Depriving an individual
of their citizenship is a political project which shapes the boundaries of belonging. By
recognising this wider impact, we have the conceptual space to look beyond the directly
affected individuals to the migrant and diasporic communities they come from. These
communities are disproportionately affected by citizenship deprivation practices but
the effects on them have been addressed in a less considered way so far.
Following an overview of legal developments, I explain the conceptual arguments that
provide a scaffold for my case law analysis. First, that colonial links are less prominent in
legal accounts of the framework around citizenship deprivation. Citizenship deprivation is
seemingly reserved for exceptional situations to protect national security but there is less
attention given to how this aim itself is embedded in colonial logics and uses the law to
racialise “undesirable”individuals. Citizenship deprivation is a distinct technology of the
politics of belonging which “others”individuals and communities. Establishingthe bound-
aries between who does and does not belong to a nation-state creates an “us versus them”
division whereby those who do not belong are defined by how they fail to match the stan-
dards of those who do belong. Racialised and minoritised communities that are dispropor-
tionately at risk of losing their citizenship are more vulnerable.
I then share three findings from my thematic analysis of the English case law in this
area. First, that the courts overlook colonialist influences on the wider framework of law
and policy. Second, permitting citizenship deprivation if it is deemed “conducive to the
public good”is a contemporary orientalising process that characterises racialised commu-
nities as less capable of “upholding the public good”. Finally, these imperialist and orien-
talist logics are reinforced by the Home Office’s ever-widening attempts to deny and
deprive individuals of their citizenship subjecting these communities to forms of coloni-
alist control even today.
516 Social & Legal Studies 31(4)
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