It has been widely observed that the population of the UK has turned to jigsaws as a pastime during lockdown. What is perhaps less well known is the extent to which the body of rules governing the right to vote in the UK resembles a jigsaw puzzle. Recent developments have seen this puzzle grow in size and complexity.
Around 40 per cent of the identified stateless population of the world live in the Asia Pacific region, with Southeast Asia harbouring the largest stateless populations. This blog maps some of the predominant causes of statelessness in the region, and gives an overview of states’ responses to this intractable problem.
Constitutional amendment will lead Mexico to apply both unrestricted ius soli and unrestricted ius sanguinis in citizenship attribution. However, details on the implications of this reform and the procedural matters involved are not clear as of yet.
In February 2021, the Supreme Court decided that Shamima Begum should not be allowed back into the UK to conduct her appeal against the deprivation of her citizenship. This decision is a victory for discretionary use of expansive state powers under minimal judicial scrutiny.
Upholding an earlier High Court decision, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that the Home Office’s £1,012 fee for registering children as British citizens is unlawful.
The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) recently published a report based on a study on access to Danish citizenship for children and young persons who are born and/or raised in Denmark. The report recommends Danish law to be amended with a view to provide for facilitated access to Danish citizenship for 1.5, second and third generation of immigrant descent.
Early in the morning of 28 January, heavily armed police escorted four children of rejected asylum seekers (three minor girls and a boy) to the airport from where they were deported to Georgia and Armenia. The incident caused widespread protests because the children had been living and attending school in Austria for many years and were considered well integrated. The social democratic governor of Carinthia, Peter Kaiser, and others called for a debate on ius soli, the attribution of citizenship by birth in the territory.
In 2016, Moldova joined a growing group of countries offering citizenship by investment (CBI) schemes. However, in 2020, the parliament repealed the amendments to Moldova’s citizenship law that permitted CBI, the same year that Cyprus also repealed its CBI scheme. Why was Moldova’s foray into CBI so short-lived?
Governments worldwide have taken an unprecedented array of measures affecting human mobility to curb the spread of COVID-19. Examples include evacuations, lockdowns and travel restrictions. Some states have applied these public health measures only to those with citizenship status, while others have included long-term foreign residents and settled migrants. Our project examines these choices and how they challenge our understanding of citizenship, migration and mobility.
The enjoyment of LGBTIQ* rights varies across Europe. As a result, rainbow families in Europe (families where a child has at least one parent who identifies themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex or queer) can face problems with recognition of civil status, birth registration and access to birth certificates, leaving some children in these families either stateless or at risk of statelessness. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will now have an opportunity to address this issue in a case concerning a child born to same-sex parents in Spain, for which a hearing is due to take place next week.
