SPS - Unmaking Citizens: Racial exclusions and the privilege of a passport

Seminar synopsis

With the intensifying securitisation of Western borders in the global War on Terror citizenship rights are increasingly fragile. Measures introduced by the British government to deal with the terrorist threat at home include citizenship deprivation, temporary exclusion orders as well as passport removals.  Whilst citizenship deprivation has provoked critique for its potential violations of international human rights conventions on statelessness, cancellations of passports have not been subjected to the same kind of critique. Drawing on recent debates and interview data we demonstrate the alignment of citizenship deprivation and passport removals and conclude that these measures serve the same goal: of unmaking citizens.  We situate the politics of deprivation and denationalisation within broader histories of racial exclusion, in order to consider what this trend reveals in relation to the terms of citizenship and specifically how frames of exclusion of racially undesired subjects are being reconfigured. 

Dr Nisha Kapoor

Nisha Kapoor is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York.  She currently leads an ESRC funded research project titled ‘Deport Deprive Extradite’ which explores race, citizenship and the state in the context of the War on Terror.

Admission: is by free ticket only. Please book your ticket at https://www.york.ac.uk/sps/seminars/2016-17/dr-nisha-kapoor/