With the intensifying securitization of Western borders in the global War on Terror citizenship rights are increasingly fragile. Measures introduced by the British government to deal with the terrorist threat at home include citizenship deprivation, temporary exclusion orders as well as passport removals. Whilst citizenship deprivation has provoked critique for its potential violations of international human rights conventions on statelessness, cancellations of passports have not been subjected to the same kind of critique. Drawing on recent debates and interview data this article demonstrates the alignment of citizenship deprivation and passport removals and concludes that these measures serve the same goal: of unmaking citizens. The paper discusses findings from novel empirical research with individuals who have been removed of their British passports to illuminate the racialized dynamics of this process and the reconfiguration of racial governmentalities.

Nisha Kapoor and Kasia Narkowicz, Unmaking citizens: passport removals, pre-emptive policing and the reimagining of colonial governmentalities, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2018.