Contingent Citizenship

In Contingent citizenship, Sandra Mantu examines the changing rules of citizenship deprivation in the UK, France and Germany from the perspective of international and European legal standards. In practice, two grounds upon which loss of citizenship takes place stand out: fraud in the context of fraudulent acquisition of nationality and terrorism in the context of national security. Newly naturalised citizens and citizens of immigrant origin are mainly targeted by these measures. The resurrection of the importance attached to loyalty as the citizen’s main duty towards his/her state shows that the rules on loss of citizenship are capable of expressing ideals of membership and identity, while the citizenship status of certain citizens remains contingent upon meeting these ideals.

Sandra Mantu Ph.D. (2014) Radboud University, The Netherlands, is researcher at the Centre for Migration Law of that university. She has published on EU citizenship and free movement rights and acted as European expert on issues of free movement of EU workers. Her publications include: Concepts of Time and European Citizenship (European Journal of Migration and Law 15:4, pp. 447-464, 2013); Acts of Citizenship Deprivation: Ruptures between Citizen and State (E. Isin and M. Saward Enacting European Citizenship, Cambridge University Press, pp. 111-132, 2013) (with E. Guild) and Constructing and Imagining Labour Migration: Perspectives of Control from Five Continents (Ashgate, 2011 (co-editor with E. Guild)).

"The author succeeds in presenting a fresh perspective to citizenship policies, where the recent development in the citizenship deprivation practices reflects a securitising trend and the conception of citizenship as a privilege."
-Saila Heinikoski, University of Turku