The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times by JOSHAW (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020, 336 pp., £75.00)
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12261 |
| Author | DEVYANI PRABHAT |
THE PEOPLE IN QUESTION: CITIZENS AND CONSTITUTIONS IN
UNCERTAIN TIMES by JO SHAW (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020,
336 pp., £75.00)
In court judgements on nationality, it is common to find references to the
constitutions and citizenship provisions of various countries. In addition,
the influences of regional as well as global human rights legal instruments
are often cited by lawyers in arguments and judges in their decisions.
It is surprising, then, that academic scholarship on the topic is usually
single-country or single-region specific in nature. In her new book The
People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times,Jo
Shaw decisively goes against this trend through critical engagement with
a plethora of jurisdictions at various levels of national and international
adjudication.
Indeed, Shaw’s book is that rare one which, with assured self-confidence,
both maps the terrain of large and complex concepts and raises novel
questions for further research. She is a renowned scholar of citizenship whose
contribution to the field is already formidable, but it is important to note
that the book does not repackage any of her earlier work. While reams of
pages of scholarship on citizenship are already available, Shaw takes an
original view of the literature. She asks an urgent question: why is it that
citizenship, which is central to nation state–individual relations, is so often
left out of constitutional frameworks or given lip service in legal instruments
of constitutional stature?
Although she harnesses an impressive set of data and empirical works in
the book, Shaw is not just interested in the empirical studies for purposes
of illustrative data. Her work has a normative compass to it, centring on
what equal citizenship means in the context of constitutional frameworks.
In particular, Shaw is interested in whether citizenship can be set free from
ethnic privileges and prejudices. Thus, while she positions the book in the
field of socio-legal studies (p. 176), she also draws upon a conceptual
understanding of the issues that she uncovers and asks normative questions
about differentiated citizenship.
The ambition of the book is to grapple with contested concepts such
as citizenship and constitutions in order to bring clarity to the normative
query in a systematic manner. Shaw’s comparative constitutional approach
is well suited to examining the similarities and differences between different
legal, political, social, and cultural contexts, which would otherwise remain
hidden in single-country analyses. Shaw acknowledges that there is a variety
of constitutions and constitutional arrangements concerning citizenship and
this makes her task an arduous one. Ver y few constitutions actually make
citizenship central in their operation and this renders the task of interpreting
gaps even more challenging. Doing so requires a greater consideration of
contexts, as what is left out can easily be misunderstood. While Shaw
establishes that the presence of many concepts such as dual citizenship and
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