citizenship | Pandaemonium

WHEN CITIZENS ARE NOT ALL MADE EQUAL

February 17, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the transformation of the meaning of citizenship, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on changing scientific theories.) It was published on 9 February 2020, under the headline ‘Deportations to Jamaica, the Shamima Begum case and Windrush betray a woeful regard for the notion of citizenship’. ‘A transcendental power, more than any man should possess.’ So said Lord Houghton in 1870 in response to William Gladstone’s plan to acquire the ability to revoke the […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: british politics, citizenship, deportation, immigration, shamima begum, shiraz maher, statelessness

ON THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS

March 11, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the contemporary significance of Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘the right to have rights’, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the dispute at Parkfield Community School over teaching about gays.) It was published in the Observer, 10 March 2019, under the headline ‘Human rights mean nothing unless we defend real, threatened people’. ‘The right to have rights.’ It’s 70 years since the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined that luminous phrase in an essay in […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: citizenship, discrimination, hannah arendt, human agency, human rights, immigration, lida maxwell, refugees, right to have rights, rights, struggling

SHAMIMA BEGUM AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

February 18, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate over Shamima Begum, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the BBC’s attitude to abortion.) It was published in the Observer, 17 February 2019, under the headline ‘The possibility of redemption is central to a humane society’. How do you solve a problem like Shamima? In February 2015, 15-year-old east London schoolgirl Shamima Begum travelled to Syria with two friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, to join Islamic State. Last […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, War on terror • Tags: citizenship, ethics, islamic state, islamism, jihadi returnees, jihadism, moral responsibility, morality, sajid javid, shamima begum

BLOOD, SOIL AND CITIZENSHIP

November 5, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on notions of citizenship, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on bootlegging and Bob Dylan). It was published in the Observer, 4 November 2018, under the headline ‘Myths about shared culture have no place in the citizenship debate’. What links Mike Leigh’s new film, Peterloo, to Donald Trump’s threat to deprive children born to undocumented migrants of the right to US citizenship? It might seem an odd question, best left to Only Connect fans. But answering […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: 14th amendment, birthright citizenship, britain, citizenship, Class, donald trump, eric kaufmann, france, jus sanguinis, jus soli, michael walzer, mike leigh, peterloo, usa

CAST OUT BEYOND THE EMBRACE OF THE LAW

April 15, 2014 by Kenan Malik

In January, the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, introduced a last-minute measure to the government’s Immigration Bill that would enable her to remove the citizenship of any terror suspects whose conduct is ‘seriously prejudicial to the interests of the UK’, even if to do so made them stateless. It is, May insisted, a necessary measure in the war on terror. An article in the New York Times last week highlighted the way that even without the new law, Britain already […]

Categories: Britain, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: britain, citizenship, immigration, totalitarianism, war on terror

MYTHS OF ASSIMILATIONISM AND MULTICULTURALISM

November 25, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Here is my introduction to the discussion on ‘immigration and citizenship’ at last week’s Trudeau Foundation conference on ‘The Making of Citizenship’, about which I have already written. I was part of a double act with Ruben Zaiotti, whose job it was to talk about the Canadian experience. Mine was just to be provocative. The debate about immigration and citizenship in Europe is often presented as a debate between multiculturalism and assimilation. Not only does this oversimplify the debate, but […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: assimilationism, british asians, britishness, christopher caldwell, citizenship, france, immigration, islam, multiculturalism, muslims, racism