Removing the Right to Have Rights

By Nisha Kapoor

Volume 15, Issue 1, pages 105-110

Introduction

Since the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2002 came into force, it is estimated that at least fifty‐three people have been stripped of their British citizenship, with forty‐eight of these cases occurring since 2010 under the coalition government (Galey and Ross 2014). In 2006, legislation was passed to make possible the removal of citizenship from someone if it was deemed that to do so would be ‘conducive to the public good’ (Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, 56(1)), and last year a new clause was approved which effectively means naturalized Britons can be made stateless if there are ‘reasonable grounds for believing’ citizenship can be acquired from another country (Immigration Act 2014, 66(1)). Essentially what we have witnessed since the beginning of the twenty‐first century is the gradual extension of state powers to remove citizenship, where the premise upon which it can be withdrawn has become more and more expansive and the fundamental rights which it provides for have become ever more precarious.

Read the full article here.