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Scholarship largely sees fraud-based citizenship stripping as a tool for guaranteeing the consistency of the naturalisation process against applicants who do not respect the rules. This implies that the line between 'desirable' and 'undesirable' citizens is drawn in accordance with procedural norms. In contrast, this article argues that deprivation on grounds of fraud aims to create a virtuous and responsible political subject. Drawing on the cases of France and the UK, the paper shows how government officials and judges understand citizenship deprivation not simply as a means to safeguard the procedural integrity of naturalisation, but as a mechanism for the moralisation and responsibilisation of applicants. The article further contends that not everyone is made the subject of 'renationalisation'. British and French deprivation policies reproduce suspicions and stereotypes against specific categories of migrants, constructing them as second-class citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]