16 February 2022
A Profit that Creates Loss
The recent UK Supreme Court judgment of 2 February 2022 continues to exclude children from citizenship rights. The Court's decision is built on the idea that British citizenship is a statutory right rather than being based on common law or human rights law. As a consequence, the court's focus was on statutory interpretation instead of child welfare. The profit made from the children’s registration fees is at the expense of children who remain excluded from citizenship. Continue reading >>
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11 February 2022
British citizenship as a non-constitutional status
It would generally seem uncontroversial to suggest that citizenship constitutes a fundamental status in all democratic societies. The UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in PRCBC casts doubt on whether that assertion holds true. The judgment highlights the uneasy relationship between fundamental (or constitutional) rights and citizenship rights, as well as between common law rights and statutory rights, within the UK’s incompletely codified constitutional order. Continue reading >>
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29 January 2022
The Dutch Family Reunification Procedure
Being able to reunite with family from abroad falls under the right to family life, one of the fundamental rights every individual is entitled to. Despite this, some Dutch family reunification requirements are potentially at odds with international human rights law standards and the EU Directive 2003/86/EC on the right to family reunification. This problematic state of affairs reflects the ongoing racialization of European borders, and that of Dutch borders in particular. Continue reading >>
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28 January 2022
Postcolonial Migration and Citizenship in the Netherlands
Can formerly colonized subjects and their descendants be full and equal citizens of the former metropoles – and if so, what would that look like? In this blogpost, we explore these politics of belonging in European postcolonial polities by looking at different conceptualizations of the relationship between the Dutch state and Surinamese-Dutch citizens and immigrants. While Dutch government discourses tend to represent Surinamese-Dutch as too different to belong to the Dutch Nation, Surinamese-Dutch organisations claimed postcolonial citizenship as different and equal. Continue reading >>
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23 December 2021
Stateless without Notification
Shocking new legislation currently going through the UK parliament includes controversial powers to strip British citizens of their citizenship without notification, even if they hold no other citizenship and risk being made stateless. Opponents say such powers would be draconian and in violation of international law. The numbers of people potentially affected are huge, at almost 10% of the population. Moreover, there are clear racialised biases, with ethnic minorities and those of migrant heritage predominantly at risk. Citizenship seems no longer to be an inviolable status of rights and protection, but more and more a conditional and insecure privilege. Continue reading >>
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22 November 2021
Irregularizing Citizenship in India
India has created complex legal mechanisms that have introduced severe insecurity of citizenship status. These mechanisms permit arbitrary targeting of persons as suspected foreigners, place unreasonable evidentiary standards for proving citizenship, and facilitate creeping loss of substantive rights – all without a formal revocation of citizenship status. These processes, I suggest, are best understood as what Peter Nyers calls ‘irregularizing citizenship’. Continue reading >>
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08 November 2021
Post-9/11 Australia has pushed a tradition of exclusion to constitutional extremes
Since its earliest days, Australia’s sweeping constitutional powers over aliens and immigration have been drawn on to support broad exclusionary laws. In the two decades since 9/11, the tendency towards exclusion has increased significantly. Continue reading >>
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04 November 2021
Status, Accountability and Community after 9/11
Migration and citizenship law are politically configurable matters, like all others. All terrorist threats affect the state's duty to protect life, possibly state infrastructure and the sense of security in the public sphere. Picking up a connection to migration, in contrast to already existing domes-tic right-wing and left-wing extremism, can promise a quick reduction of external dangers in the political competition. Certainly, most people reject an equation of migration and terrorism as politically backwards. However, the image of migration being infiltrated by terrorism is effective. Continue reading >>
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08 June 2020
“Passport Trade”: A Vicious Cycle of Nonsense in the Netherlands
“How can you justify the fact that your work was translated into Russian? This goes against the claim that you engage in academic work. Is Russian not the language of billionaires interested in getting another citizenship?” Following the persistent repetition of this question by a four-person independent investigation committee installed by my home University, my lawyer, seeing that I have no words – indeed, am unable to speak – asks for a break and leads me out of the room. We sit on the steps in front of the beautiful Academy building. This is Groningen, January 2020, I am a Dutch professor of European Constitutional Law and Citizenship here and Russian is my mother tongue. Continue reading >>28 February 2020
The Constitutional Status of Indigenous Australians
In two recent judgments, the apex Australian court, the High Court, decided what intuitively seems obvious: that Aboriginal Australians, as that term is understood in Australian law, cannot be deported from Australia. The case exposed several fault lines that run through Australian law. Continue reading >>
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