Anna Dziedzic 4. Current debates and trends 4.1 Dual citizenship At the time they were originally enacted, citizenship laws in eleven of the twelve states of Oceania prohibited or sought to avoid dual citizenship. Kiribati was the exception, as it adopted innovative constitutional provisions to accommodate its distinctive colonial history and the cross-border movement of entire communities. In order to facilitate intensive phosphate mining on the island of Banaba (also called Ocean Island) in the early twentieth century, the British colonial government negotiated to relocate the Banaban people. In 1945, many of the people of Banaba were relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji, where the colonial government recognised them as a distinct community with their own form of government and a degree of autonomy.114 With decolonisation, however, issues arose in both Fiji and Kiribati over the appropriate citizenship status of Banabans living in Rabi. Fiji’s independence Constitution treated Banabans as it did other groups living in Fiji, conferring Fijian citizenship on those born in Fiji, and the right to apply for Fijian citizenship for those born overseas.115 Fiji, however, prohibited dual citizenship and required Banabans to renounce their British citizenship if they wanted to take up Fijian citizenship.116 In this context, Kiribati’s independence Constitution of 1979 included a range of innovations to recognise the continued connection between the Banabans living in Rabi and their island in Kiribati’s territory, as well as other relocated i-Kiribati peoples.117 The first was to entitle all peoples of i-Kiribati descent to hold dual citizenship (in contrast naturalised citizens of non-i-Kiribati descent must renounce any other citizenship in order to hold Kiribati citizenship). Secondly, the Constitution guaranteed anyone of i-Kiribati descent the right to enter and reside in Kiribati. Thirdly, the Constitution provided special protections for Banabans, including entrenched protection of their rights to land in Banaba, unaffected by their place of residence.118 In this way, Kiribati’s citizenship laws found a way to accommodate the complexities of identity and connection between a relocated people and place. They also negotiated the prohibitions on dual citizenship then in place in neighbouring Pacific states by recognising dual citizenship only for persons of i-Kiribati descent. Beginning in the late 1990s, other states in Oceania began to recognise and permit dual citizenship, by removing automatic loss of citizenship for citizens who acquired foreign citizenship (outgoing naturalisations) and removing the requirement that naturalised citizens renounce their previous citizenship (incoming naturalisations). In 2019, only the Federated 114 For detailed history see Katerina Martina Teaiwa, Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba (Indiana University Press 2015). 115 Constitution of Fiji 1970 ss 19, 20. 116 Jane McAdam, ‘“Under Two Jurisdictions”: Immigration, Citizenship, and Self-Governance in Cross-Border Community Relocations’ (2016) 34 Law and History Review 281, 307–8. 117 At the date of independence there was a significant community of i-Kiribati people living in Solomon Islands. In the 1930s, people from other parts of the then Gilbert Islands were relocated to uninhabited islands in the Phoenix Group, which were prone to severe drought. The people were relocated again in the 1950s, this time to Solomon Islands: Kenneth E Knudson, ‘Sydney Island, Titiana, and Kamaleai: Southern Gilbertese in the Phoenix and Solomon Islands’ in Michael D Lieber (ed), Exiles and Migrants in Oceania (University Press of Hawaii 1977). 118 Constitution of Kiribati 1979 ss 19, 119. 22 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp 2020/1- © 2020 Author