Is postimperial citizenship reparative?
Timothy Jacob-Owens (University of Edinburgh)
David Owen and Rainer Bauböck raise the timely question of whether and how citizenship might play a role in reparations for slavery and colonialism. They conclude, rightly in my view, that the proper response to the brutal violence and dispossession meted out by European empires generally lies not in the large-scale granting of the citizenship of former imperial powers, but rather in the global redistribution of material resources and opportunities for transnational mobility. Nonetheless, they also suggest that ‘there may be specific contexts in which grants of citizenship are appropriate’.
In this response, I explore the latter suggestion by reference to postimperial citizenship in the United Kingdom (UK), complementing Jocelyn Kane’s and Patti Tamara Lenard’s earlier discussion of Indigenous (non)citizenship in settler colonial contexts. More precisely, I consider whether fast-track, group-specific pathways to British citizenship for former colonial subjects can and should be regarded as ‘reparative’ in the sense outlined by Owen and Bauböck.
As alluded to in the kick-off contribution, British nationality underwent a fundamental transformation in the latter part of the 20th century: whereas in the late 1940s subjects of the Empire shared a singular citizenship of the UK and Colonies, by the 1980s this common status had fractured into multiple British nationality statuses (including British citizenship and British Dependent Territories citizenship), as well as the newly created citizenships of the by then independent former colonies. While all citizens of the UK and Colonies had originally enjoyed an unqualified right to enter and remain in the UK, by the 1980s this ‘right of abode’ was restricted to British citizens.
The UK has since put in place various fast-track routes to ‘full’ British citizenship for formerly colonised groups. I focus here on three examples, each corresponding to one of the underlying ‘reasons for citizenship restoration’ discussed by Owen and Bauböck: the Chagossians (exile), Hong Kongers (lost territory), and the Windrush generation (discrimination).
Exile: The Chagossians
In 1965, at the behest of the United States (US) government, the UK unlawfully separated the Chagos Islands from the (former) colony of Mauritius to create the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’ (BIOT). By the early 1970s, the Chagos islanders – despite their status as citizens of the UK and Colonies – had been forcibly removed to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands, without compensation or the possibility of resettlement in the UK. Most were instead stranded in Mauritius or the Seychelles, where they faced widespread discrimination and impoverishment, with limited access to education, employment, and housing.
After the fracturing of UK and Colonies citizenship, the Chagos-born islanders acquired British Dependent Territories citizenship by virtue of their ties to BIOT. In 2002, all those holding this status were automatically granted ‘full’ British citizenship, with special provision for the first generation of Chagossians who had been born in exile. In 2022, further provision was made to allow subsequent generations to register as British citizens. Parliamentary debates indicate that these steps were taken with the explicit intention of remedying historic injustice: the member of the House of Lords who proposed the 2022 provision, for example, argued that it would end ‘the citizenship injustice done to the descendants of those for whom the Chagos Islands were home’.
On the face of it, the Chagossians’ pathway to British citizenship seems a plausible case of reparative citizenship, roughly analogous to other cases of citizenship restoration for exiles (Holocaust victims, Sephardic Jews, etc). The registration route meets the formal conditions stipulated in Owen’s and Bauböck’s definition: applicants are not required to have previously held British citizenship, to have resided in the UK, or to meet other (discretionary) naturalisation requirements. There is also at least a loose symmetry between the nature of the historical wrong and the remedy offered: having originally been removed from and denied access to British territory (widely understood as a form of membership deprivation), the Chagossians have now been granted such access via British citizenship (albeit only to the UK mainland rather than BIOT).
Nonetheless, there are limits to this reparative character. By continuing to bar access to the Chagos Islands, the UK has, at best, offered only a partial remedy for the injustices of the past, failing to fully address the historical wrong of forced expulsion. As discussed in a previous GLOBALCIT forum debate, while some Chagossians actively campaigned for access to British citizenship, others remain indifferent, understandably seeing the right to return to their homeland as the only appropriate remedy. While progress has recently been made in the context of UK-Mauritian negotiations concerning sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, the resulting agreement only foresees the possibility of ‘visits’ to Diego Garcia, with any ‘resettlement’ limited to the outer islands.
Lost territory: Hong Kongers
In 1997, sovereignty over Hong Kong was formally transferred from the UK to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Like the Chagossians, Hong Kongers had been citizens of the UK and Colonies, later becoming British Dependent Territories citizens in the 1980s. However, in anticipation of the transfer of sovereignty to the PRC, this latter citizenship was subsequently revoked and replaced with the status of British National (Overseas) (BN(O)).
Limited pathways to full British citizenship have subsequently been put in place. In 1990, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 50,000 (out of 2.6 million) Hong Kongers were ‘recommended…by the Governor of Hong Kong’ to be registered as full British citizens. 30 years later, following the 2019 protests, the UK government introduced a bespoke British National (Overseas) Visa, which allows BN(O)s to settle in the UK and register as British citizens after 5 years of residence. In the Home Office guidance, the latter scheme is explained by reference to ‘the UK’s historic and moral commitment to BN(O) citizens’.
These fast-track routes to British citizenship bear some resemblance to the Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, and (Northern) Irish examples discussed by Owen and Bauböck, likewise involving the restoration of citizenship after it was involuntarily lost in the context of ‘shifting international borders’. However, neither fully meets their definition of reparative citizenship: the 1990 registration scheme was restricted in scope and highly discretionary, while the more recent visa route requires current residence in the UK.
In addition to these formal limitations, the purpose and effect of these acquisition pathways are by no means exclusively reparative. As Michaela Benson explains, the 1990 registration route was intended to encourage Hong Kongers to remain in Hong Kong (rather than flee to Australia, Canada, or New Zealand) in a bid to ensure the colony’s ‘continuing economic success’. In a similar vein, as Benson points out, the significant fees associated with the recent visa route ensure that it is primarily wealthy Hong Kongers who can settle in the UK and acquire British citizenship. This selective approach casts doubt on the true motives underlying these schemes, prompting similar questions to those raised by Ashley Mantha-Hollands in relation to the case of the ‘lost Canadians’.
Discrimination: The Windrush Generation
Between 1948 (when HMT Empire Windrush arrived in London) and 1973 (when stricter immigration legislation came into effect), thousands of people from across the Anglophone Caribbean and elsewhere in the (former) Empire lawfully settled in the UK, exercising their rights as citizens of the UK and Colonies or as Commonwealth citizens. With the fracturing of citizenship of the UK and Colonies, only ‘patrials’ (predominantly those with ancestral ties to the UK) were automatically granted British citizenship, excluding many members of the ‘Windrush generation’. The latter were instead offered a time-limited registration route, which expired at the end of the 1980s.
Decades later, many of those who had not registered as British citizens (either because they chose not to or were unaware of the option) then struggled to meet the strict documentary requirements imposed under the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policy initiated in 2012, which treats individuals as ‘illegal immigrants’ unless they can prove their lawful presence in the UK. In consequence, members of the Windrush generation have been variously denied the right to work, refused housing and healthcare, and in some cases even deported or denied re-entry to the country.
Responding to the emerging ‘Windrush scandal’ in 2018, the then Home Secretary pledged to ‘put these wrongs right’, acknowledging that the Windrush generation were ‘British in all but legal status’. Correspondingly, alongside a formal apology and a claim to financial compensation, they have subsequently been offered a facilitated route to naturalise as British citizens, without the usual fees, language requirements, and ‘Life in the UK’ test.
In principle, there is a clear justification for offering reparative citizenship to members of the Windrush generation. As Nadine El-Enany has shown, the ‘patriality’ requirement had the intended effect of excluding racialised citizens of the UK and Colonies from automatic access to British citizenship: in practice, 97% of those who qualified as patrials were white. There is thus a strong case that the original granting of British citizenship was (indirectly) racially discriminatory and that, by analogy with citizenship restoration for gender discrimination, reparative citizenship is therefore owed. The Windrush citizenship pathway also does not risk producing the ‘destabilising’ external effects Owen and Bauböck warn against: Caribbean leaders have, in fact, actively advocated for citizenship rights for the Windrush generation in the UK.
In practice, however, the formal features of the reparative route offered to the Windrush generation fall well short of Owen’s and Bauböck’s definition. Unlike the Chagossians and Hong Kongers, members of the Windrush generation must naturalise (rather than merely register) in order to acquire British citizenship, and while some of the usual conditions have been waived, they still have to meet both the residence and ‘good character’ requirements. As Jo Shaw and I have discussed elsewhere, members of the Windrush generation continue to be denied access to British citizenship on this basis, robbing the scheme of its reparative potential.
The coloniality of reparative citizenship
While each reflects elements of reparative citizenship, none of the foregoing examples fully aligns with the definition and/or justifications developed by Owen and Bauböck. For the Chagossians, without the right to return, access to British citizenship offers, at best, only an indirect, partial remedy for the historical wrong of expulsion from their homeland. For Hong Kongers, selective pathways to postimperial citizenship have prioritised economic considerations over corrective justice. For members of the Windrush generation, meanwhile, the promise of reparative citizenship has resulted in only limited avenues for redress. In practice, postimperial reparative citizenship in the UK thus remains selective and strategic, echoing the colonial dynamics of citizenship under imperial rule.
This is not to suggest, however, that postimperial citizenship should never be granted as a remedy for colonial harms. The Windrush generation, for instance, strikes me as having a particularly compelling claim to unimpeded access to British citizenship. Nonetheless, to avoid legitimate accusations of neocolonialism, postimperial citizenship should only be granted in response to demands from the groups concerned. Furthermore, as alluded to above, the granting of citizenship should also be supplemented by other reparative measures. These provisos are most clearly illustrated by the Chagossian case: while it is appropriate that the UK responded to their demands for British citizenship, corrective justice also requires financial compensation and a right to return to the Chagos Islands. In this sense, postimperial citizenship can play no more than a limited role in the broader project of colonial reparations.