I agree on the most part, although I have a couple of buts:
- citizenship as a right or a privilege is something that needs to be reckoned with. The more benefits that are attached to citizenship, the greater the tendency to view it as a privilege and so include very strong citizenship stripping powers. This need not be the case, but it's a clear trend.
- There needs to be some really important underlying theoretical thinking about what makes citizenship a right, and what benefits should therefore attach to citizenship because of citizenships unique meaning. There is a long line of writing about social citizenship which suggest that pretty much only apex political rights should attach to citizenship (i.e. being able to make rules for the community) because other social rights should ethically attach to residency or settlement. I understand you to be suggesting that more ought to go into the citizenship bucket but, as in the first point, the more rights that goes in, the more likely it is that citizenship is treated as a privilege. There needs to be a really clearly articulated vision of the right to citizenship to resist this trend.
- Many of the cited problems with the registration of children are resolved through a reversion to the original concept of registration as a right that was the initial legislative intent. Solange and Steve Valdez-Symonds have written a series of articles in JIANL in this vein and it underpins the work of PRCBC, including their legislative challenge to the registration application fees. It's not then clear that a complete rewrite of the BNA is needed to address this particular issue.
- The creation of a new treason offence in order to undermine some of the rationale for citizenship stripping, is a good one. One of the reasons that citizenship stripping is so abhorrent is the way that the statelessness backstop means that only those with dual citizenship or non-British heritage (even if that's generationally removed) can ever be caught by it. This is one of the core reasons that citizenship stripping disproportionately affects Muslim and racially minoritized Brits.
However, a treason offence is also likely to disproportionately affect Muslim and racially minoritized Brits. Arguably this is because of the geopolitical moment. Individuals convicted of treason during WW2 were more likely to be white (like Lord Haw Haw) because of the political make-up of the Nazis as the enemy. One of the key reasons for citizenship stripping recently has been joining ISIS and the like. Simply transferring these cases over to a treason offence, by itself, is likely to result in a disproportionate use of the a treason offence against Muslim and racially minoritized Brits too. We might say this is OK because that this is just a consequence of the geopolitical moment, and that the pendulum may well swing again the other way in the future as geopolitics shifts.
But the geopolitics of the moment is not ideology free. Before we embrace a treason offence as a solution, we need to examine much more closely the potential ways in which any new treason offence might also disproportionately target Muslims and racialised minorities in ways which perpetuate racist framings. What does it say about Britain as a state if the people most likely to be convicted for a crime against the state are Muslims and racialised minorities, and do we like what that does say?
I agree on the most part, although I have a couple of buts:
- citizenship as a right or a privilege is something that needs to be reckoned with. The more benefits that are attached to citizenship, the greater the tendency to view it as a privilege and so include very strong citizenship stripping powers. This need not be the case, but it's a clear trend.
- There needs to be some really important underlying theoretical thinking about what makes citizenship a right, and what benefits should therefore attach to citizenship because of citizenships unique meaning. There is a long line of writing about social citizenship which suggest that pretty much only apex political rights should attach to citizenship (i.e. being able to make rules for the community) because other social rights should ethically attach to residency or settlement. I understand you to be suggesting that more ought to go into the citizenship bucket but, as in the first point, the more rights that goes in, the more likely it is that citizenship is treated as a privilege. There needs to be a really clearly articulated vision of the right to citizenship to resist this trend.
- Many of the cited problems with the registration of children are resolved through a reversion to the original concept of registration as a right that was the initial legislative intent. Solange and Steve Valdez-Symonds have written a series of articles in JIANL in this vein and it underpins the work of PRCBC, including their legislative challenge to the registration application fees. It's not then clear that a complete rewrite of the BNA is needed to address this particular issue.
- The creation of a new treason offence in order to undermine some of the rationale for citizenship stripping, is a good one. One of the reasons that citizenship stripping is so abhorrent is the way that the statelessness backstop means that only those with dual citizenship or non-British heritage (even if that's generationally removed) can ever be caught by it. This is one of the core reasons that citizenship stripping disproportionately affects Muslim and racially minoritized Brits.
However, a treason offence is also likely to disproportionately affect Muslim and racially minoritized Brits. Arguably this is because of the geopolitical moment. Individuals convicted of treason during WW2 were more likely to be white (like Lord Haw Haw) because of the political make-up of the Nazis as the enemy. One of the key reasons for citizenship stripping recently has been joining ISIS and the like. Simply transferring these cases over to a treason offence, by itself, is likely to result in a disproportionate use of the a treason offence against Muslim and racially minoritized Brits too. We might say this is OK because that this is just a consequence of the geopolitical moment, and that the pendulum may well swing again the other way in the future as geopolitics shifts.
But the geopolitics of the moment is not ideology free. Before we embrace a treason offence as a solution, we need to examine much more closely the potential ways in which any new treason offence might also disproportionately target Muslims and racialised minorities in ways which perpetuate racist framings. What does it say about Britain as a state if the people most likely to be convicted for a crime against the state are Muslims and racialised minorities, and do we like what that does say?
You need a TV series ,do us all a favour