The after rights of the Citizen of the UK and its Colonies: Who is the subject of the rights of the citizen in Britain’s hostile environment?

Abstract

Radical democrats highlight the emancipatory potential of citizenship rights insofar as they enable the enactment of political subjectivity by those who lay claim to them. However, the conjuncture(s) within which citizenship rights originate (and are rearticulated) matters for the kind of political subjectivity they afford. This article traces the articulation of citizenship rights in Britain in relation to three historical conjunctures: 1948 (in which the introduction of the status of Citizen of the UK and its Colonies (CUKC) coincided with imperial decline); 1981 (in which the status of CUKC was displaced by that of British Citizen as Britain reinvented itself as a nation-state) and; 2012 (in which the hostile environment for immigrants was instituted amidst sustained austerity for its citizens). This conjunctural analysis enables us to recognise the good character requirement (that underpins the deportation of Black Britons to former colonies) and the Right to Rent (that deputizes immigration control to landlords) as after rights of the CUKC, that is, rights depleted of their political significance as belonging to a free and equal member of the polity. This, I argue, significantly limits any emancipatory potential that enacting citizenship rights in Britain might otherwise enable.