Sandra Mantu

‘Terrorist’ citizens and the human right to nationality

Abstract Citizenship deprivation – the power of the state to take away citizenship against the wishes of the individual concerned – is gaining momentum among policy-makers and scholars. This interest is linked with changes introduced by a number of European states with a view to make it easier to take away citizenship from persons engaged in terrorist activities (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom). This article focuses on two such countries, the United Kingdom and France, which have changed their nationality legislations to make it easier to take away citizenship because it is deemed conducive to the public good (UK) or because the person concerned was convicted of a terrorist offence (France). Changes to citizenship deprivation powers were justified by national security concerns involving citizens engaged in terrorist activities at home and, increasingly, abroad. While home-grown terrorists and foreign ‘terrorist’ fighters pose a threat to national security, the use of nationality legislation to deal with them as security threats encroaches upon their human right to nationality. The British and French cases illustrate how far states can go in the exercise of citizenship deprivation powers, and to what extent human rights standards limit state powers of deprivation.

Concepts of Time and European Citizenship

AbstractThe right of EU citizens to enjoy full social rights in their host Member State is closely related to their engagement in the performance of economic activities, as either workers, self-employed or service providers. Since the adoption of Directive 2004/38, length of residence has become an additional criterion for entitlement, in the absence of economic engagements. This article examines the implications of economic readings of time for the strengthening of social rights of all migrant EU citizens and questions the extent to which work time remains the main frame of reference for the legal construction of EU citizens and their rights.

EU citizenship and social solidarity

In this article, we seek to place the CJEU’s recent case law on social rights for economically inactive EU citizens within the larger political context of the last couple of years that has been characterized by the increased contestation of the type of mobility underpinning EU citizenship. The relationship between EU citizenship and social solidarity – in the form of social rights for mobile EU citizens – has taken centre stage during the Brexit affair. Political debates concerning the free movement of (poor) EU citizens have focused upon the issues of the abuse of free movement rights and welfare tourism, despite a lack of evidence that the two are actually taking place on a large scale within the EU. The now defunct Brexit deal highlights the extension of debates that initially focused on economically inactive EU citizens to EU workers, whose mobility had been considered a positive aspect of EU integration. The scope of social solidarity in the EU is demoted as a result of judicial and political interventions that question the social dimension of EU citizenship and which may have implications for other groups of migrants situated within the EU.

Migration on the Move

Migration on the Move offers a critical review of the profound transformations that have taken place in the field of migration and asylum laws and policies in the past 20 years, and their implications for the refugee and migration issues faced by EU states.

Citizenship Deprivation in the United Kingdom. Statelessness and Terrorism

The United Kingdom has amended its nationality legislation in order to make it easier for the state to exercise citizenship deprivation powers. The new powers target citizens who have engaged in behaviours labelled by the UK executive as not conducive to the public good. Statelessness operates as the outer limit of the government’s capacity to transform citizens into foreigners and plays an important role in limiting the exercise of executive powers.

Paper Citizens. How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries

How is citizenship acquired in developing countries in which naturalisation or registration are often alternatives too expensive for the vast majority of (illegal) migrants? Kamal Sadiq’s book is built around the idea that traditional citizenship scholarship is of little help in answering this question because it is based exclusively on the experience of Western states characterised by strong citizenship infrastructures which help them distinguish neatly between citizens and foreigners. By describing the manner in which Bangladeshis in India, Afghans in Pakistan and Filipinos in Malaysia engage in the exercise of citizenship rights and then use the documentary products of these to gain citizenship status, Sadiq challenges the usual understanding of citizenship acquisition, while underlining the neglected role of documents in this process. The book is divided into two parts. The first defines the concept of ‘documentary citizenship’, which is proposed as an appropriate term for describing the experience of migrants acquiring citizenship in developing countries. The second part discusses the effects of this for the rights to vote and to move across state borders. Finally, the book teases out the implications of this mode of citizenship acquisition in the context of globalisation and security. Sadiq starts by reminding us that most migration actually occurs in the developing world, but the lack of reliable and accurate data makes it difficult to estimate the scale and type of migration undergone in these parts of the world. India, Pakistan and Malaysia, despite having very different political regimes, share a lack of strong citizenship infrastructures and poor documentary regimes. This creates a certain type of belonging, which Sadiq labels ‘blurred membership’ (Chapter 3) since it is based mainly on historical and cultural claims but lacks legal proof; this has important consequences for nationals and migrants alike. With migration built on historical patterns, the second ingredient of documentary citizenship, the existence of networks of complicity, is facilitated (Chapter 2). These networks challenge state power by facilitating the entry, settlement and socio-economic and political participation of illegal migrants. They can provide access to documents and recognised identity outside the framework of state sovereignty, and thus create citizenship from below. Documents play a major role in the acquisition of citizenship since the possession of a citizenship-indicating document (which can be something as trivial as a ration card) helps circumvent the formal paths to inclusion via naturalisation or registration. Documentary citizenship (Chapter 4) is thus presented as a direct result of the state’s reliance on documents, rather than more traditional means (which are, however, still present to a certain extent in developing states), to identify its members. The last part of the book focuses on the implications of documentary citizenship for state sovereignty (voting rights are examined in Chapter 5) and territoriality (Chapter 6). One of the striking effects of documentary citizenship is that migrants in possession of a citizenship-indicating document are entitled to vote in national elections. Sadiq minutely documents in all three Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 36, No. 8, September 2010, pp. 1353 1357