Today. We're very lucky to have Dr. Devyani Prabhat come to talk to us about her work on.
Does that mean that with somebody else on citizenship that was later on citizenship stripping.
Devyani is a reader in law at the University of Bristol Law School,
which teaches immigration and nationality law and supervises students on citizenship and constitutional rights.
She's a both a sociologist and a lawyer by training, and she studied in the US at NYU.
Narayanan has published two monographs, which are about national security and citizenship,
one of which won the Society of Legal Scholars Award for Outstanding Legal Scholarship in 2017.
She's also the editor of a third book on British Citizenship, which is forthcoming later this year.
So on her hand, over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I think it's better at this time because then I can see the slides better myself.
So. So these are the two books.
Anyone who is interested. What?
This one is primarily about national security and has a lot on cancellation of citizenship as a strategy in it.
And this one is more about belonging and citizenship. So not quite on the topic, but because it's so topical.
I've been on media a lot talking about it today.
I want to do something much deeper,
not just give you soundbites on what citizenship stripping is and not just talk about Shamima Begum as a person and a human interest subject,
which I think is important, but reflect on the situation to reflect more broadly on what the powers are and why we are having it.
So my friend today is to talk about the legal developments, then to talk about what's new in the Shamima Begum case in terms of the use of the powers,
and then to look at what the implications are and to then analyse that in terms of why.
A little bit of the why question, why do we have these developments?
How doesn't connect with past measures and the history of citizenship in this country?
So it's a very ambitious I've got a lot to cover.
And I'll try to go through it slowly. If it's fast, just let me know as Laura and I get quite excited.
So that might happen. A good visual representation.
Can you actually see from here? Well, yeah.
Maybe I should mention this. I think if I'm here, that's good.
I. So if you look at the this graph, I think it's a really good visual depiction of the use of this power.
Now, the power has been on the statute books from the time of the World Wars, so it's not new.
And again, came back in full force, probably 2002, but its use is dramatically rising every year.
2017 there are 107 known instances.
There are many more instances we don't know about. So this is the data that we have.
2018 further use and again, we're waiting for new stats on this.
But I think it gives a sense of the rise and rise of cancellation powers in this country.
And also a good thing to bear in mind is this doesn't include data on cancellation of passports, because that's a completely different power.
That's a to power. The numbers for that we do not know.
And it's completely different. This is the actual citizenship cancellation data that we have.
So what then happened in the Shamima Begum case and what is happening in it?
Shamima Begum We know she was a 15 year old at the time.
She was born in Britain, has British parents who are of Bangladeshi origin, but they have British citizenship.
So she's second generation and that's the relevant factor here.
She's not holding any other citizenship. She doesn't hold anything else.
And she is. She's gone to Syria. She's still there.
She's in various camps being moved around between various camps in Syria.
She cannot re-enter because her citizenship has been cancelled.
And we can add to this mix various facts that she had a British born child at various times.
She's with other children, none of whom have survived.
But I'm keeping it out of this set of factual scenarios, because I think this is enough for us to look at what I'm going to emphasise,
which is the link between citizenship, ethnicity, first, second generation migrants and then how easily this PA can operate and how how does it work.
So I'm focusing on that. So this is what I do.
These are the kind of relevant facts for us. So what is really the concern?
Now people frame it in various ways. They will talk about arbitrary.
Privation of nationality and how that is banned in the international convention.
But then when there is a process, a procedure in law by statute and it's not must be used against an entire population.
We're not talking about a situation of cancellation of citizenship like potentially in Myanmar against the Rohingya.
So it's a different scenario. So we are probably not talking about arbitrary deprivation.
We are talking about who can be left without a nationality.
Can anyone be left stateless? And Shamima Begum situation is that she does not have a surviving nationality, existing nationality at the moment.
So in effect, she is stateless where she is in Syria.
So this is the international framework then on statelessness and the right to nationality.
One question comes up a lot. The UK is a signatory and has ratified both the 1954 and the 61 Convention on Statelessness.
But did the second 161 convention where you cannot create statelessness?
It has a reservation to it. So a question that comes up often is the reservation is that you can, for national security interests,
strip naturalised people of their citizenship if that was allowed by the statutes on the books of signing.
So this is the exact wording for it. So the question is,
does that reservation then permit the UK Government now to have new laws which
allow the stripping of citizenship and leaving naturalised citizens stateless?
So this is not a central question for Shamima Begum Case.
Let me say why she's not naturalised. So that reservation and the scope of it doesn't apply at all.
So let there be no doubt that we're not talking about the scope of the
reservation and the use of that provision in the interests of national security.
Leaving that aside in other cases, maybe that is relevant.
So we should talk a little bit about the reservation. The reservation specifically says that it is limited for national security to strip people.
If that was permitted at the time of that signing of this of this convention, at that point of time,
the UK was having such a provision in its statute which said that naturalised citizens can minister for national security.
This is true. However, that was repealed in subsequent years.
That was no longer there. And then that was reinstated only in 2014.
So whether that reservation actually covers that or not for anybody is a matter of opinion of and there is legal opinion that it does not.
But at the same time, potentially it could. So I will leave it open, but also make the point that that's not what is being argued initially.
It would be the case and the government has also not been raising this reservation in most of the measures that they implement.
So but this is kind of the legal framework and the international level.
Okay. So when can these powers be exercised?
So there is a pre amendment set of powers and there is a post amendment.
The amendment happens in 2014 through the Immigration Act to the British Nationality Act.
So you could previously only cancel the citizenship of somebody who has more than one nationality.
So they have to be what is called a British plus something else,
because then if you cancelled their British citizenship, they are still left with the default nationality.
So that was the scenario that you could have it.
The reasons is that it could be because of fraud or it could be because of their conduct.
There is. That's just too good. So only for fraud or conduct.
But the first one is no longer true. It's not only for dual or multiple nationality quotas anymore.
The third thing that's notable is that prior to the amendment, this affected everybody, every citizen, in a similar manner.
It doesn't depend much on the pathway. But for the fact that, yes, if you are born here, it's unlikely that it would be a case for fraud.
Right. Because, you know, fraud means there would be some sort of documentation.
So the cases about fraud are about naturalised people in general.
That's because of the nature of the pathway. But specifically, the pathway was not different for naturalised versus people who are born here.
So the key importance of the surviving nationality.
Being there was to then protect against statelessness and to satisfy the requirements of not violating those two conventions.
So that's where we were operating until 2015 when changes happened because of the cancellation.
The other key legal thing to know is why and what's the standards of conduct for conduct cases for which you can have cancellation?
The general standard is this. Is it good for.
Is it is it for the public good? Is it conducive to public goods.
To cancel the citizenship. So this those who work in immigration detention and you know, this is the exact deportation standard for foreigners.
So it's not a very high standard we are talking about. And I think there is something about that itself which speaks to this.
You're making someone foreign. Therefore, you treat them with that same standard of evaluation.
So look at whether it's conducive to public good. Would you get a further explanation on what is conducive to public goods?
Strange. Strange frontier. Sorry. It just means it's been defined as depriving the public in the public interest on the grounds of involvement in.
And then there is all this terrorism, espionage, serious organised crime, the kind of read together and then war crimes are unacceptable behaviour.
Okay, so that's a real change over there.
So if there is a form that goes off here unacceptable behaviour, please be aware there is this power.
I'm joking. I mean, obviously we read the words in the context, right?
So we have to read the last bit in the context of all these other ones as well.
But it is a really broad standard for looking at what is conducive to public good and
can potentially expand and involve things way beyond the scope of national security.
In fact, it is being used in other cases we know, because the gangs which are being involved in like the paedophile gangs in Rotherham,
etc., this was the power that they were using and talking about foreign citizenship stripping.
So it's definitely not just national security. So the conducive ground now actually allows the state to strip people of citizenship,
even if they do not have a surviving citizenship, sort of as they are naturalised citizens.
And what it says is that they can be left stateless.
But there is an additional standard. It's not just conducive to public good.
It also has to be conduct that is in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK.
This is the exact reflection of the language in the reservation to the convention
in and I suspect that's exactly what the UK had said in its reservation,
that if there is conduct that is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK,
it will be able to strip people and potentially leave them stateless.
So that same standard is there. So if somebody is to be left stateless, it has to be conducive to public good to strip them.
Plus the standard has to be satisfied. So the two are working together.
Right. So. There are a number of cases, ten key cases which come up on this.
And all of them turn on one key question, that the person who has to restrict, do they actually have a surviving nationality or not.
So none of these cases so far are about whether they're being left stateless in the sense of the new amendment,
because the new amendment allows the Home Secretary to do it and these people stateless.
If the Home Secretary has some reasonable grounds to think that they can actually acquire another nationality.
So it doesn't have to be an existing nationality. It can be a future nationality.
And that's where it's interesting from the Shamima Begum case,
because one of the arguments in her case was that she has eligibility for Bangladeshi nationality.
So she's not actually holding it. But according to the Bangladeshi statutes, it could be that until she's 21,
she has a claim to her parents being of Bangladeshi origin to Bangladeshi citizenship.
And this is being often referred to as a potential alternate nationality.
She does not hold that. But could she acquire that?
That's being raised. Again, this is very spurious.
And why? Because she's not a naturalised citizen. Everything in this is actually applicable to naturalised citizens.
So that's time. That shouldn't have been talked about in the context of someone who was actually born here in the UK.
So I'm trying to present to you the arguments that are happening, but also whether it does or does not apply, essentially my case.
Anyway, let's talk about Qaeda. It's a classic example of this.
Does someone have another nationality or not? Al Qaeda.
He came as a child to the UK and his family obtained asylum here, then has refugee status and then naturalised.
And he's a naturalised British citizen. The question then was, does he also hold Iraqi nationality or not?
Yes. So if he held Iraqi nationality, he could be stripped of his British citizenship and it would not leave him stateless.
And this is a pre amendment case. So it was quite central that he's not being left stateless.
And what happened here is that the home secretary argued here that whether or not he actually had Iraqi citizenship,
there was reasonable grounds to believe that he could have because Iraqi it was just a regime change.
And at various points of time, the law books in Iraq, they said various things about who is a national.
At one point in time, it said someone has to give up their Iraqi nationality.
So they said that he should have actually given up his Iraqi nationality in order to not have it.
So the fact that she didn't give it up means he potentially has an existing one.
And these type of alternate arguments were raised. The Supreme Court said nothing doing.
It's pretty clear we have heard experts evidence here he doesn't have Iraqi nationality existing anymore.
And it's not enough to believe he could have or he could have.
He doesn't have. The Iraqi government said he doesn't have. So it's pretty decisive.
He will be rendered stateless. So Home Secretary lost this case.
But this language about reasonable belief that the person can acquire some other nationality can still
from this and found its way then to the statute and fourth amendment and it's still there existing.
And so it still exists as a standard. It was a losing argument in this case.
So I will now give you my chart on how it is really different for different citizens, and the consequences for them are also different.
And it really shows how there is a categorisation now.
So the first column is the person born here first who if they're born here,
if they don't hold another nationality, can their citizenship be cancelled for conduct?
No, because there is an absolute bar against making someone born here who doesn't hold another nationality stateless.
So this is where some even big this case actually comes to squarely in this.
Next, however, is what if they do hold another nationality?
And this is not where we have the standards that I was talking about.
That's just for the naturalised citizens. The reservation is for naturalised citizens.
This is not supposed to be that. Not about eligibility for another one, but actually holding another one.
So that's actually not Shamima situation.
But this is where the Home Office is claiming she's actually going to be because
of her connection to her parents and a rights which only expires at 21.
She's 19. Now, even if that bill goes to say, by the time the SEC has heard this case, it will be another couple of years.
She will be more than 21 by then. So whatever is the so-called kind of connection, words have gone.
But anyway, so they would say that she doesn't come here. She comes here, and in that case she holds that.
And therefore,
there is no risk of statelessness if we strip her and the turban and keep bear in mind that Bangladesh has said that she has nothing to do with us,
and if she tries to enter, we are going to try and impose the death penalty.
So as an entire Article three, our issue over there, which is now up in big red letters,
but sticking with just aimlessness, okay, that's what they're trying to do.
The third one then is the person born in the UK. No, but they a citizen to the whole.
Another nationality? Yes. And therefore there can be cancellation for conduct because they will be left with a different nationality.
Now, you might wonder, how will this really operate in practice?
It's not about deporting them.
In all known instances of cancellation of citizenship, the person's already outside the country, so there is no need to deport their outside.
If they can appeal from there to the CAA, then the issues will come up.
Okay, so that is and there is no risk of statelessness because they have another nationality.
The fourth one then is the most interesting one, first amendment.
Here a person is not born. Here doesn't have another nationality.
Their citizenship can be cancelled for conduct and they can be rendered stateless.
And this is the post amendment scenario where you can do it on the grounds of reasonable belief
that they might be eligible for another citizenship and might acquire that citizenship someday.
So that is where we are with this. And I really clearly see then that there is categorisation through the operation of this power,
even in how it is formally set out in the law and definitely in how it is now playing out in practice.
Because in practice the ethnic connection is or the parents links are now shifting people even within
these formal categories of law which are already separate for people depending on their backgrounds.
Okay. So I shall give you another case, which is the farm case.
Now, this this person has completely created a lot of problems in the cancellation world because I say this,
because he's actually in U.S. prison now for the next two years in a supermax prison,
and he's been found to have trained in jihadi camps is from Vietnam.
And I say it means I'm annoyed because it's not really a great case to take to the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals or anywhere.
And we're getting all these major observations on what citizenship is, content of citizenship, who what can you do,
all of these from this type of cases which are not very sympathetic, but, you know, so be it.
This person was born in Vietnam and it's very similar to the Algeria scenario,
came as a child with his family from Vietnam and eventually naturalised and became British.
The whole issue in the first round of litigation was does he have Vietnamese nationality or not?
Which becomes basically a question of fact, according to the foreign legal statute, which has to be determined by use of expert evidence.
And they used expert evidence here to look at it.
And Vietnamese government again said he's not Vietnamese.
We have no existing ties with him.
So the British government argued there that it's it's a question of him still being Vietnamese in law, even if he is not Vietnamese, in fact.
So you have to look at it as a matter of law and look at the statute books, not just take into account what the government is saying,
because this it is possible for governments to simply say that various people are not their citizens.
I mean, pretty much not just the case of the Rohingya in Bangladesh.
So it's possible to say that and that surely cannot be the end of that.
We still have to look at the statute. That was the argument here. So what could you say?
Eventually,
this went through several rounds of litigation and eventually the Supreme Court has said that actually this leaves him stateless when we do.
But by now we have the change in the statute which potentially prohibits this.
And he's also in supermax prison in the US.
The latest story in this is that he challenges this again and it's come up on the grounds that he's got a present threat to the British society.
So he argues this, that I'm not a present threat because I'm a U.S. person and I know I'm just going to I that's
going up to the Court of Appeals and the Court of Appeals has said there's nothing to it.
I mean, it's conclusively prove that you've taken part in jihadi camps and you've taken up arms.
And so this is where we then get some interesting observations.
I will come back to that. We get some interesting observations on both the value of citizenship and unfortunately,
on the fact that this person has actually violated duty of loyalty allegiance.
And I think that's interesting. It brings back certain things from the past and gives me a chance to then go dipping into history.
But let me go back to what the say about the right to nationality here.
So in the farm case,
the Court of Appeal and maybe Justice Arden says that it's really important the right to nationality is an important way to right.
It is properly described as the right to have rights.
Hannah Ireland fans here, they just say it as Hannah Arendt says, that they should have put that in there,
such as the right to reside in the country, restaurants, consumer protection and so on.
It's like really and so on. We could have had something more on what the rights of citizenship is.
Fortunately, earlier case, the violence case, which is about actually naturalisation and some other cases like over here,
the one that I've cited here, in these cases, the Supreme Court has gone more into depth into what the right to citizenship is than this,
but pretty much it is the right to return, your right to reside consular protection,
rights, robust debate and political processes and things like that, which we can imagine.
But this construction is really an unhappy one here. But the question is, if families actually left stateless, as the Supreme Court had said,
what recourse would such a person have if they're not in a maximum security prison in the US?
Let's forget his personal situation. What would it be?
The only clue we have is from this letter that Lord Taylor of Holbeach wrote in 24 in the report states to the
House of Lords because the House of Lords was very concerned about this fact that people may be left stateless.
And in this letter, he says that this is not the same as people who lose their nationality because of being rendered stateless.
And, you know, war are when they're displaced.
It's not that kind of statelessness when we render someone stateless.
So the operation of this powers, they cannot get the protection of the statelessness provisions that are generally existing.
There has to be something different for them. What would be there then?
So this letter says we'd have to give them a period of restricted leave and there would be restrictions placed
on them and they would have to live then subject to that and such as restrictions on employment and residency.
So they would get a different kind of leave. And I was recently at the SRF Institute in the Netherlands.
They have this exact thing happening right now where they have given people
who have been rendered stateless because of cancellation and limited leave,
which is something like a control order over here in the Netherlands.
So that's how it's happening there. If we want a preview of how it's happening elsewhere.
But we haven't had anyone placed on this because we have actually I don't know if we have, but it's not known yet.
That's the 2015 situation statute has not been used in this manner yet.
Far in the case of Pham was in a maximum security prison.
So we don't really get any insights into what might happen to people who are rendered stateless through the use of this power.
Right. So this then is the firm case and its fallout.
So we have this is the latest iteration in what is happening with cancellation powers here.
Okay. So I want to draw your attention back to this idea of that allegiance and loyalty,
because it is quite common for politicians to say that citizenship is a privilege and not a right.
But it's not that common for courts to say it is conditional on anything.
So it's interesting to get this that this person has fundamentally and seriously broken the obligations which apply to him as a citizen.
So we're getting a focus on duties put at risk, the lives of others whom the crown is bound to protect.
I mean, there is here is the allegiance and protection model, which harks back to many other darker periods of history.
Let's talk about it. I do not consider that it would be sensibly argued that this is not a situation in which the
state is justified in seeking to be relieved of any further obligation to protect the affluent.
And I think it's fascinating that we're getting this allegiance protection model coming back, because where is this thing coming from?
Where have we ever encountered this kind of language?
So differential legal treatment based on pathways.
Potentially we have the rights, least though we have potential links to Article six,
Article six about fair trial that's never been successful in any of the cases.
Article eight right to have family life and citizenship as part of one's identity.
Again, not being looked into in any depth in any of the cases.
Article 14 about discrimination because we're talking about differential treatments
who would pay obviously of 14 would come in in those scenarios has successfully
come in in other national security cases the case versus secretary of state's
case in which there was a question of indefinite detention of foreign nationals,
can we keep them indefinitely? And the court said there's no evidence that they are only providing any heightened threat to
the country and therefore Article 14 gets triggered with Article six and issues like that.
But you haven't had it in the context of loss of citizenship.
So these are all potential issues that are there. Rights framework is existing instead of that, instead of looking at the differential treatment.
We are seeing a resurgence and of the loyalty and allegiance model.
So that's it makes me take the where and why is this coming from.
And I think it's really because it is drawing back from something which is about of another equally flexible understanding of legal status,
which was of subject to subject but has never been defined in law until 1948.
And similarly, citizenship has never been actually defined in statute until 1948, when it was defined in terms of subject to it.
So there is definitely a very strong legal connection between subject to it and citizenship.
So if we are harking back to allegiance and protection, which is really the model which is at the heart of the subject to model,
that we need to think about how closely Parliament now citizenship is running on.
In terms of subject to that, is it or is it not in the past?
That's only.
An action that you could think of between people and the emperor, and that would connect people from various parts of the empire with the emperor.
Now, interestingly, it was actually supposed to be subject to what was supposed to be about family quality citizenship.
It's also about family quality, subject to it, drawing from the cousin case of 1608, which was this fascinating case about King James,
the sixth becoming king for a King James, the first of the United States, Scotland, England.
And then whether someone who was born in Scotland would hold Indonesia as if he is in England or what would be the
extent of allegiance of subjects who are born outside England to somebody who is holder of the crown of hope now.
So for the first time, extra territorially applying the concept of subject to it properly.
And what the court in case said is that it is about formal equality and access to the protection of the sovereign,
and therefore you are equally subject to the laws and therefore it doesn't matter where you're born.
If the crown is then controlled, if the monarch is in control,
they have jurisdiction over you and therefore you are subjects and you get the protection of laws and it's equally applicable whether it's in England,
Scotland or elsewhere. And then this seemed to be a kind of solid understanding of what subject to it is.
And this was used throughout the Empire years in many ways throughout the countries.
Of course, it was never actually just that, and it varied tremendously from place to place in the Empire and from time to time.
And it did so because it mattered that you had to keep it flexible in order to suit different places.
So it meant completely different things in the Dominions, and it meant completely different things in the colonies,
and it meant a very different thing in India, which was not supposed to be a colony, but had very much the features of being a colony.
So it again and it varied in terms of its substance because in theory every subject could travel freely across the empire.
They could do this now. There was no mass travel at that time, so they're not actually doing it.
But and also in practice, if they try to do it, it doesn't operate like that.
So people would go from one part of the empire,
let's say they're going from India and they would go to a different part like Australia and routinely they would be refused entry.
Okay, so that was it. So it wasn't about really glorious free movement and being welcomed everywhere.
There were definitely categories there in operation of subject and so there were subjects and there were subjects that was happening.
And again, we see a very similar kind of categorisation now happening with citizenship.
So it's not that's far off the mark. This object to the relationship was purely one of allegiance and protection.
You offer allegiance is completely horizontal with the source of the power in terms of yourselves.
It's supposed to be formally equal, but there's no protection of equality anywhere else.
Citizenship in the language of the farm case now is also the same,
because if you're looking for protection and you're offering your allegiance, you shouldn't be engaging in conduct which breaches that.
If it does, you're out okay? So you don't get that protection anymore.
So very, very similar in construction again.
So the link I said that they were all both defined in terms of each other and it's really very interesting because the first time that we get to
definition of subjects is when in 1948 the British Nationality Act defines kinds of citizenship and it includes subjects who as one of them.
Now, why does it do that? Because until then we had no definitions and it was just being, you know,
as people were being designated as British protected persons in some places instead
of subjects and depending on where right read different things were happening.
So what was the impetus behind defining this?
It actually happened because Canada defined British subject to it as something that's limited to its own citizens.
And they did this in 1948 and in just actually that very year.
And that's then for the first time legally, it violated the principle of equality and free movement,
which was there in theory in law, even if not in practice.
That was the first time it did that. So what it meant is that Canada had limited giving those rights only to its own citizens.
So if anyone else came from any other part. Of the empire.
They couldn't just claim to be British subjects and get those rights.
Now, this is something that was happening as a matter of practice in places like Australia,
which also denied naturalisation to other subjects who cared.
So they even had the left, they couldn't actually naturalise and become Australian.
So that was happening. But this is when it statutorily happens.
Okay. And Canada then says this objects from other parts of the empire.
Sorry. So this is subject to it, mediated through the lens of citizenship in the Dominions.
And so that then makes the House of Parliament here.
Then where we have this thing of what are we going to do? What if everybody in the Empire, all the Dominion,
starts doing this as a matter of legislation in a way that's will create tremendous backlash and resentment?
It's also at a time when the various colonies and dominions had provided a lot of support in the war efforts.
So there was and decolonisation was happening. So it was a matter of appeasing a lot of different political interests.
So at that time we get the British Nationality Act 1948 as a reaction to this,
saying something completely radical and the effects of that we feel today for the first time ever,
it's said anyone from anywhere in the Empire could actually come and live here in the UK, travel and come and settle.
Now remember, this is before mass travel. They were not expecting the Windrush ship to come.
They were not expecting airlines. It wasn't that.
It was about keeping the poor interest and everything, people happy in the mix and trying to counter what happened in Canada.
So we had the 1948. This opens the door and what happens?
Okay, you must travel, starts the Windrush ship arrives here.
50,000 people come in the fifties and sixties over here.
These are the people whose progeny and whose descendants mostly.
I mean, there are some people like me. What has rendered Britain heterogenous today?
Right. So we are talking about multiculturalism.
I know we have these debates about whether Britain was heterogeneous in the Middle Ages or, you know, much before.
I'm sure all that's valid.
But the modern heterogeneity, the present day heterogeneity we are talking about that can be traced back to this period of time, falls to 1948 ACT.
Now that resulted in sort of people viscerally experiencing for the first time the presence of the colonies on the motherland, so to say.
And there was this whole thing about this is the you know, it was a whole.
This is a centre. And those were the periphery. But now you have the periphery coming into the centre and you can actually see them.
And so there's a whole different experience of colonisation, which is felt in the parts of the former and part of it.
So what happens thereafter is kind of the next few decades of immigration law.
So I'm obviously not going to go to each measure and tell you that would be the most boring way to do this.
But let's suffice to say, successive immigration acts then started redefining who can enter and who can recite.
That's been the focus of immigration laws ever since to undo what the 1948 Act has done.
And the latest chapter of that we are still living with the Windrush generation's deportations
is because of the merging of those laws with our current new hostile immigration legislation,
which requires documentation which was never required under those previous ones.
So then the current issue is about the hostile environment and people not being able to establish who they are is
because of a combination of those ones that tighten entry and these ones which now ask them to provide paperwork.
So that's how we have these restrictions and confusions of statements.
Anyway, so a really important case of that roll back of empire, we can say is in the sixties, early sixties, late sixties, early seventies,
when the East Asian Africans came here and they came here from Kenya and they came here from Uganda because of the dictatorial regimes,
their launching into African nationalism kind of project and saying minorities have to leave.
So a lot of the people who were of Asian origin there, who had British passports which were issued,
which made them British citizens, wanted to then exercise the right to travel with that and enter into the UK.
So they used that and then wanted to come. They arrived here.
But what happened was. That's you then didn't the British government didn't permit them to come and settle
in the beginning the date and then there was a backlash against that and they said,
no, those passports were not that really it wasn't a travel document in that sense.
It wasn't meant to be used like that. Unsurprisingly, that was then the situation.
Many of them were deported, then held in other countries, some in France, etc. Some were kept in.
They didn't have proper detention centres. And then but, you know, temporary prisons and all kinds of situations,
they took their case to the European Commission and the European Commission on Human Rights said this is degrading treatment,
this is inhuman and degrading treatment. Actually, in very strong words said, this is racism and this is discrimination.
This case doesn't go to the open court. Hear more from that because the UK government actually starts a new voucher system for settling the people.
So they say, okay, we will address this, this won't carry on.
And they then issue voucher for each head of household who wants to resettle.
There are many more problems about that because the head of household happened to be always male and happened to be.
So I'm not saying it was perfect, but they addressed what they perceived as the main problem with the with the commission's report.
So again, so this is the kind of rollback that's how they give it its name, but call it a reverse decolonisation through.
And there are the scholars who are doing this. It's not just me. It's about reverse decolonisation of migration laws because it's about the doing
undoing the effects of decolonisation in the other parts right at the centre to using,
you know, migration laws to decolonise the country now.
So how do you do that then? Once you de-link like to recite from nationality,
you make right to recite a separate thing from nationality so that having nationality doesn't automatically attach to that.
And the way you do that then is by introducing a new concept, another legal creation, which is the right of a vote.
The right of a vote is something that now people can get if they are patriotic.
So this is the 1971 act, and I using it as an example to show again how race matters.
The 1971 act creates two categories patriots who have a special connection with the country and non patriots.
Patriots happened to be people who have a grandparent or a parent who is born within the limits of the UK is territory.
Now that means in the islands, literally.
So which means facially neutral, having no grandparents from the island, but in effect people from secular society.
So you can see the continuation of this dominion versus colony dominion being the settlement places like Canada, Australia, South Africa,
which have similar populations who are British white, whereas the other ones who will be in the colonies will not be able to provide this link.
So they are automatically then through operational neutral law, eliminated from future migration.
So that's another concept that you can see how it operates.
There are very many such links. So Ancestry Links was a major one then in 1983, massively.
It just makes an announcement that Commonwealth citizens, okay, no more free entry and residing doesn't matter.
Connections. You'll be treated the same as alien everyone else no more special protection.
And the 1981 Act removes birthright citizenship.
Now, birthright citizenship has been considered one of the most equalising connections that people can have if they're migrants.
Because even if in their own generation they cannot access naturalisation for whatever reason,
at least the next generation, if they're born here, they can access that automatically by birth.
So to that extent,
I mean the entire history of the US nationality law has been about how the but citizenship has equalised access to various resources.
And you know that's part of President Trump saying that he's going to cancel that is because of kind of a drive against that.
But that just happened here in 1981, which means that the blood links has become really important.
Now, it's not about just being born here. You have to have that connection to blood again that will have its own kind of racialized effects.
So I've already told you about the Windrush and the hostile immigration.
So all of these are then the measures that link up and try to bring a wave of the migration of Decolonised people.
And it's kind of trying to get rid of their migration patterns to the UK.
So what they do is they. Application for cancellation. I guess I've almost done two different talks here, one on subject ID and one on citizenship.
And I've told you that I've been defined in terms of each other, but why is it still relevant?
So first thing that we always hear is cancellation is a national security measure.
It's not really so important as a national security measure.
And I say that because until now,
there has been no evidence provided by any government about how it has been used for what it has stopped in terms of anything.
We haven't got it, and I can't provide that because I don't have access to it.
It has to be provided for the people who are using it for counter-terrorism.
They have provided it, but more importantly, what it achieves, keeping people outside the country.
There are a whole range of powers that can do that. You can do that by simply using prerogative powers to cancel passports.
And the government has been doing that. And you can do that by having exclusion orders.
You can do that by subsequently putting people on trial.
Now, there are some efficacy reasons people get like if you put them on trial, will we be able to use the evidence from war zones, etc.?
But by and large, the same thing that you can do by cancellation of citizenship, you can do by a measures.
So that's not really as much a national security measure as a further measure where ethnicity is becoming, again, another source of tension.
So it is about these certain populations who need to be managed, who go to Syria,
who take part and who are by and large the progeny of the people who came in the sixties and seventies to this country.
I mean, factually, that is true. They have been radicalised and not everyone who becomes a target and who is radicalised is linked to that.
And the interesting contrast, which I find is not just the same as subject to it,
obviously it's it's if we compare and see the difference as to subject to it was very useful for extending jurisdiction when the
empire was expanding subject to it was used as a means of exercising control over the bodies of the people on whom the law applied.
So it was important to say that this person can be in this country, but they are still subject to the laws of the centre of the empire.
So it was actually used as a means of extending jurisdiction, whereas now after the loss of empire,
translation is really about saying we will not exercise jurisdiction over our citizens,
we will expel you, we will not exercise jurisdiction over you because we are not actually territorially expanding anymore.
We are consolidating the boundaries of the country, we are safeguarding the borders.
So the internal border in practice and I think there are really strong parallels here with Mary's work here.
So I've always tried to read more on that is about really shoring up the borders and expelling people and not excising jurisdiction over them.
So that's a very significant difference. So when I say that we need to look at subject to it,
it's also to understand how in operation it is decolonisation in the sense we're done with this phase, we're not expanding.
Let's not accept to exercise jurisdiction over these people anymore because it doesn't it doesn't affect materially anything in terms of territory,
so it's not worth it. So in a, you know, how many sideways end of the multicultural project, the end of the heterogeneity through that.
So if I read this without that headings something which is flexible and indeterminate, not quite well-defined,
probably equal in principle, but differentiated in practice, categorical in nature and differentiated in categories and allegiance base.
These are all traits of subject and you can transpose them now and say these are traits of citizenship.
And I think that is really scary to have that in a modern day concept where we have gone through an entire phase of human rights.
I mean, we are almost in a post human rights phase, we can say,
but of course the human rights phase wouldn't have made it possible to say subject is equal to citizenship, but we're reaching that situation now.
Okay, so I shall leave you with further thoughts because these are things that I haven't cut out,
but they're happening as we speak because just before I thank Sajid Javid I was it yesterday has made new
announcements about new counter-terror measures and they are a bit different from cancellation of citizenship.
I don't know how different this is about. Well, first of all, this is not just such a legacy.
Some various European powers are talking about setting up what tribunals in Syria.
If they set up war tribunals in Syria, the idea is to then try the foreign.
Fighters who are there over there and decide on criminal liability.
So they don't need to be allowed to return and they can be there.
So, again, I don't know what the implication of that is.
You are exercising some jurisdiction over them, but not the kind of jurisdiction that you would normally exercise over your citizens.
You are trying them through a tribunal system which is outside the territorial limits.
The second is that Sajid Javid has said that we need to use more treason laws.
Now the truth of the matter is treason laws actually require criminal prosecution.
So in a way, the other cancellation of citizenship is just cancellation through a secret tribunal.
I mean, actually, it's actually cancellation by a minister's order and then can be appealed only in a secret tribunal.
So it's treason laws as they stand are probably better in terms of court procedure.
But he's talking about shoring up that power and using it more.
If that happens, then probably I don't know if it's in addition to this kind of cancellation powers.
I'm guessing it's in addition to it. So I don't know if it's replacing that or it's adding to it,
but that's something that's not about saying we won't exercise jurisdiction, but actually saying will prosecute.
The third one is he's saying that people who enter remain certain parts of Syria.
That will be a separate criminal offence.
So that seems to be it is further moderate saying you cannot go here and there and if you've gone there will be consequences.
But it seems to indicate there will be criminal punishment there.
It's a crime. So presumably they will have to come back inside to serve sentences.
But we don't know. So this is where I'm going into a zone of speculation, just like everyone else.
But what you actually think about is this whole lengths of extra territoriality and jurisdiction of who do we exercise jurisdiction over and how?
And I think thinking about citizenship through subject to it helps one reflect on issues of extraterritorial,
extraterritorial ity and who is someone we exercise jurisdiction over and how and where.
So I would leave you with those thoughts.
I haven't said much about, you know, being them because I think it's a complete legal misfit in terms of the law.
And I expect that to come up in the appeal. But feel free to ask.
It's just.