Citizens of Nowhere: Identity and Belonging in the Eyes of the State
I have been to Ireland once in my life; a half-term holiday to Dublin and Belfast aged 16 has been my only experience of the Emerald Isle. Yet, with Brexit looming, my family and I find ourselves so dreadfully anxious of the mile-long customs queues and dauntingly stringent border control that await us on return from our summer holiday to France that we are undergoing the process of applying for Irish citizenship, hence Irish passports. Thanks to my mother’s eligibility through an Irish grandmother, I will not be subject to the dreaded blue passport, instead keeping a red one and all the freedoms it brings. Indeed, the Irish government seem relatively unconcerned by my questionable levels of Irishness in offering me citizenship, naturally begging the question: what exactly constitutes a citizen? For a bureaucratic institution based on seemingly objective principles of jus solis and jus sanguinis, it seems some governments are prepared to play a little fast and loose with their criteria.
This is perhaps best exemplified in the case of Shamima Begum. Dubbed the ‘ISIS schoolgirl’, Begum left the UK for Syria in 2015, where she married a Dutch convert aged just 15. Having previously lost two children to sickness and malnutrition, Ms. Begum recaptured the attention of international media by declaring her intention to return to the UK earlier this year. This proclamation was met with extraordinary backlash, and it seemed the Home Office would do anything in its power to prevent her return – and they did. Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked Ms. Begum’s British citizenship in February, effectively leaving her stateless – a decision which he defended on the basis of her Bangladeshi ‘heritage’. Not only has she never visited Bangladesh nor does she speak Bengali, but the conflation of legal recognition and ethnic descent is troubling and wrought with naivete. Even moreso given that the Bangladeshi government had relinquished its responsibility of Begum and warned that she faces death if she attempts to enter illegally.
In what must be considered a gross failure of the government in fulfilling the responsibilities of statehood (and violation of international law), Ms. Begum’s new-born baby – a British citizen – died in a Syrian refugee camp just weeks later as a result of Javid’s ruling. Interestingly enough, Begum’s husband who fought for IS retains his Dutch citizenship despite taking up a combative role as opposed to Begum’s domesticised one. Although remaining a citizen, he is liable to stand trial for terror offences, much like the Irish ‘ISIS Bride’ who was returned to Ireland this past weekend and arrested upon arrival at Dublin airport. Despite taking on a similar position to that of Begum in Syria, Lisa Smith has not been stripped of her citizenship. Just six months off the back of the Windrush scandal that claimed the job of former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, the ‘human fly-tipping’ practised by the UK is a deeply political act of cherry-picking that serves to demonstrate the increasingly subjective position of states with regard to their citizens. The bounds of constitutionalism and legality need not apply in favourable political climates, and something often projected as a birth right can indeed be taken from under us when we no longer meet the desired criteria.
While some states have taken on an increasingly idiosyncratic approach to the removal of citizenships, others are equally as irresolute when it comes to obtaining citizenship in the first place. Just as once established precedents seem to be falling to the wayside at the hands of centralised decision-making, such precedents themselves can also be the very means by which people continue to be excluded. Germany’s Article 116 is a piece of post-war legislation that protects the rights of those stripped of their citizenships by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, including those persecuted on the basis of politics, religion, race, or sexuality. While this sounds like a restorative and unifying policy, that cannot be considered unrealistic in terms of implementation, hundreds of rejected applications reflect bureaucratic discrepancies and lingering politics of exclusion.
Small print such as the decision to leave Germany ‘voluntarily’ have left hundreds of claimants without citizenship. ‘Morally and ethically wrong’ interpretations of Article 116 become even more dubious when the persistence of Nazi influence in the post-war administration is considered. For instance, there is no right to citizenship for adopted children, children born out of wedlock, children born to a non-German father before 1953, or even Jewish members of annexed communities such as those in Czechoslovakia. Although the German government claims that with the correct paperwork, all former citizens and most of their descendants will be reinstated, in practice it is a process marred by inconsistency and lingering injustice. The media interest garnered by this particular case in recent weeks is premised on the German government’s reluctance to amend legislation written over fifty years ago. It seems then, that while citizenship is seemingly becoming a progressively more flexible concept in the eyes of the authorities, it is also often bound by outmoded and unrefined criteria which far from reflect the world to which they apply. The apparent consciousness of the latter means it can be rendered no less political than the former.
It is no surprise, then, that I do find myself somewhat troubled by the ease by which I will be readily accepted as a citizen by another state. Although partial to a Guinness and a sing-song, it’s more than a little ridiculous to suggest that I bear more claim to Ireland than someone who has lived there for the past five years. I need no test, no ceremony, and no judge of character; just a great grandmother whom I have never met. What has become clear through the immense privilege I am afforded is the inherent politics of belonging that consistently define nationalities. And while the rules may seem backwards and enigmatic, they are in fact perfectly clear ideological markers of the desirable and the undesirable. It seems the wave of globalisation which promulgated comprehensive international policy and objective principles has brought with it an enormous sense of uncertainty, which in turn affords political subjectivity that has the power to exclude and reject.
