From strangers to citizens: Membership and belonging in an age of migration

Britain faces a political battle over its future as a multi-ethnic liberal democracy. In recent years there has been the growth of a new form of ethnonationalism in the UK, excluding individuals on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or ancestry and arguing for mass deportations or ‘remigration’. 

At the heart of this debate is how to determine the boundaries of citizenship. The question of who should be a citizen is one of the most fundamental for progressives, since it is from membership of the political community that the majority of other distributional decisions are made. In this paper we try to tackle the question of membership head-on: Who should become a British citizen in an age of growing mobility and migration?

The meaning of citizenship

There are three main schools of thought on the meaning of citizenship, reflecting the liberal, communitarian and republican traditions. Liberal thinkers, in the spirit of the sociologist T.H. Marshall, traditionally conceive of citizenship as a bundle of legal rights. By contrast, the communitarian approach centres society over the individual and therefore places greater emphasis on a shared identity and the responsibilities of individuals to their wider community. Finally, republican conceptions of citizenship are grounded in civic and political participation and contribution to the common good.

We draw on these traditions to develop an account of democratic citizenship for the UK, based on:

• equal civil, political and social rights
• active civic and political participation
• a shared identity with a responsibility to uphold core national values.

Who should become a citizen?

We argue that new migrants should be seen as potential citizens, drawing on the work of the communitarian philosopher Michael Walzer. According to Walzer, states are justified in setting admission requirements for entry, because they should be able to determine their own character. But while states have the right to control migration in the first stage, they should also provide a pathway to citizenship for those who then become resident. Otherwise, this creates the conditions of a ‘little tyranny’, where non-citizens are subject to the rules of the citizens they live beside and are themselves subordinated and disenfranchised. The Kafala system of temporary migration in the Gulf states illustrates the end point of such a model: migrant workers with no prospect of citizenship face exploitation, precarity and the ongoing prospect of deportation. 

To guard against this inequality, the pathway to citizenship should be neither excessively cumbersome, expensive nor elongated. But it should also be a process which carries weight and substance. Reflecting the communitarian and republican traditions, the journey towards citizenship should incorporate national values and identity as well as meaningful engagement in civic and political life. 

Citizenship in the UK

The contemporary system of British citizenship has evolved over the past century in response to the decline of empire, successive waves of migration, and the changing politics of nationhood. For much of the UK’s history Britons were subjects not citizens. All subjects of the British empire, in theory if not in practice, had the same status based on allegiance to the crown.

As British colonies gained independence, reform became necessary. The British Nationality Act 1948 created Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC), while continuing to treat citizens of independent Commonwealth countries as British subjects with equal rights to live in the UK. This equal status was dismantled in the following decades as governments sought to restrict Commonwealth migration. Ultimately, the British Nationality Act 1981 abolished CUKC status and introduced the modern system of British citizenship.

In its current form, there are two main ways to become a British citizen: by birth or by naturalisation. Children born in the UK only automatically become citizens if one of their parents already has citizenship or indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Naturalisation typically requires five years of residency followed by a further 12 months of ILR. Settlement is therefore a crucial stepping stone to naturalisation and provides a secure status for those who are not yet eligible or do not want to take up citizenship – particularly where their home country does not permit dual nationality.

The current system fails on two counts: citizenship is both insufficiently accessible and empty of proper meaning. Excessive fees and complexity impose major barriers to citizenship, including for children born and raised in the UK. Moreover, naturalisation is a largely formal process disconnected from matters of national identity and civic engagement – exemplified by the obscure questions which populate the life in the UK test. This reflects a decline of shared national culture, reinforced by the collapse of civic institutions and community spaces.

How do we fix it?

We argue that citizenship in the UK should both be made more accessible and reconnected to its core principles. Our reform agenda includes the following.

1. Establishing clear, consistent pathways to citizenship for all long-term residents. With respect to the government’s forthcoming ‘earned settlement’ and ‘earned citizenship’ reforms, we suggest that the qualifying period for ILR should in general be five years and as a maximum be no more than 10 years. There should also be no blanket bars on naturalisation and there should be fair protections in place for people already on routes to citizenship.
2. Strengthening pathways to citizenship for children who have grown up in the country. All children born in the UK should be able to apply for citizenship after five years of living here, regardless of their parents’ status.
3. Restructuring and reducing the cost of citizenship. Fees for children should match their administrative cost (£324). Fee reductions could in part be funded through an increase to the costs of certificates of sponsorship for employers.
4. Addressing future citizenship within a wider migration plan published and updated annually by government. This plan should set out clear objectives for migration policy and consider the implications of changes to migration rules for future settlement and citizenship levels.
5. Reforming the process of naturalisation so that it is more meaningfully connected to civic life and values. We recommend a new citizenship course for all adult applicants, which would involve a practical volunteering component to encourage civic engagement. A new citizenship test would focus on a mix of factual questions focussed on everyday life and scenario-based questions to test for national values. This would complement an expanded citizenship education for young people and new funding for social infrastructure and community assets.
6. Actively encouraging acquisition of citizenship. Those applying for citizenship could undergo a faster process compared to those applying for only ILR.
7. Developing a broader political narrative to make the case for the core tenets of democratic citizenship. This reform agenda on citizenship must be matched with a full-throated rejection of ethnonationalism and a convincing political case for an account of citizenship grounded in equal rights, democratic participation and a shared civic identity.