JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN STUDIES  39 against loss of citizenship status. States still enjoy room to pursue national interests that reflect their state-building and state-preserving trajectories as well as different understandings of the fundamentals of the relationship between state and citizen. Despite the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the existing legal framework designed to protect the human right to nationality, the possibility to challenge citizenship deprivation orders and the need to respect procedural standards as part of the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality have been important in ensuring that state power to deprive on national security grounds is kept in check. Judicialization could encourage state authorities and national courts to take internationally agreed nationality standards more seriously at a time when citizenship deprivation powers are inscribed within national security and counter-terrorism policies, thus undermining their anchoring to the human rights paradigm. The development of counter-terrorism policies has unfolded without a clear human rights dimension, a criticism made in respect of both international, EU, and national policies in this field. States are increasingly introducing wide definitions of what constitutes a terrorist act, thus enlarging the type of behaviors that may lead to loss of nationality. The national cases examined here highlight the need to remind states of their obligations in respect of nationality and statelessness as the outer limits of their powers to undo citizenship, irrespective of how disloyal some citizens behave. Equally, international and European human rights bodies should play a more active role in securing the protection of the human right to nationality, and challenge state practices that deviate from these standards even if the actual number of persons affected by such measures is small. Despite the symbolic nature of citizenship deprivation powers, the attempt to dilute and circumvent existing legal standards concerning nationality deserves a more robust engagement from the international community. By removing the protection against statelessness for naturalized citizens, the UK has gone furthest in using nationality law to deal with citizens engaging in behaviors deemed not conducive to the public good, while remaining within its international obligations stemming from the 1961 UN Statelessness Convention. The French case shows that the ECN coupled with strong constitutional arrangements offers higher standards of protection: French citizens by birth cannot lose that status and statelessness is prohibited; in contrast, British citizens by birth, if dual nationals, can lose their British citizenship. The examined national practices diverge from what are supposed to be universal standards as one of the main motivations for changing existing legal rules on citizenship deprivation is to be able to expel and remove the ‘terrorist citizen’ from state territory or if abroad prevent him from returning. In both countries, the need to deal with radicalized citizens who pose a threat to national security and develop legal avenues to secure the national community are superimposed upon older debates about who deserves to be a citizen. The legal rules devised to embody this answer focus on dual nationality and naturalization as markers of foreignness, suggesting the development of citizenship hierarchies whereby deprive-able citizens seem to occupy an intermediate position between ‘real citizens’ and foreigners (Choudhury 2017; Mantu 2015). Citizenship deprivation is part of a wider context in which nationality, immigration, and security are fused with the effect that citizenship ceases to be a secure legal status for those who are deemed dangerous or unworthy.