Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain

by Karatani,Rieko

• ISBN13: 9780714653365
• ISBN10: 0714653365
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explains the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain that repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981. It examines the alternative citizenships of British subjecthood and Commonwealth citizenship, and demonstrates how the complex rules of citizenship and immigration were devised in response to the need to build and transform those 'global institutions', the British empire and later the Commonwealth. In covering these areas, this work extends the research beyond this century. It argues that Britain's formal membership has always been attached to the global institution and that the creation of British citizenship was rejected as long as policy-makers in Britain considered it beneficial to maintain the global institution in some form. In addition to the division between the holders and non-holders of British subjecthood, there was a future division among British subjects: those in Britain and the Dominions were regarded as kith and kin, whereas those in thecolonies only had the same nominal status. The affinity between those in Britain and the Dominions was institutionalised in 1914 by the common code system, whereby Dominion governments were to adopt identical citizenship legislation. Post-Second World War immigration policy was, in practice, a continuation of pre-war policy, with an all-embracing citizenship law alongside exclusive immigration controls. The enactment of the British Nationality Act 1981 was a belated acknowledgement by the British government that its long-standing efforts to maintain the citizenship structure that enabled the alternative and national types of citizenship to co-exist had been abandoned by the Immigration Act 1971.

Author Biography

Rieko Karatani is currently Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Kyushu, Japan.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Guy S. Goodwin-Gill
Series Editor's Preface	xi
Acknowledgements	xv
Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction	1	(14)
Understanding Citizenship	15	(24)
The Development of British Subjecthood before the Twentieth Century	39	(31)
The Common Code System: Britain and the Dominions in the Pre-Second World War Period	70	(36)
Commonwealth Citizenship: From the British Nationality Act 1948 to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962	106	(38)
Emerging National Citizenship through Immigration Control: From the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 to the Immigration Act 1971	144	(35)
Epilogue: An Appraisal of the British Nationality Act 1981	179	(10)
Conclusion	189	(12)
Appendices:
I. Aspects of Citizenship	197	(1)
II. Comparison of National and Alternative Types of Citizenship	198	(1)
III. Development of Various Types of Citizenship in Britain	199	(1)
IV. Entitlement of Citizenship Rights and Privileges in the United Kingdom at the Time of the Enactment of the British Nationality Act 1981	200	(1)
Chronology	201	(3)
Select Bibliography	204	(18)
Index	222