The revival of citizenship deprivation in France and the UK as an instance of citizenship renationalisation

Over the past 20 years, rules governing citizenship stripping have been debated and modified several times in France and Britain. Through this process, deprivation of citizenship has been transformed into a sanction that specifically targets Islamist' terrorists. This article examines the revival of citizenship deprivation from the mid-1990s onwards and draws on parliamentary debates, legal cases and interviews with lawyers and officials. It shows that governments develop strategies to make sure they are able to rid themselves of individuals whom they present as dangerous to the nation, even if this implies going back on or bypassing human rights norms. The theoretical argument put forward is that deprivation forms part of an effort to renationalise' citizenship, that is, to reassert national membership as a privilege that states can take back and to prove that this membership still matters both to provide individuals with rights and to protect the national community's identity.