T H E G L O B A L S TAT E O F C I T I Z E N S H I P Security of status Citizenship is often described as a secure status: once a citizen, always a citizen. This security of status comes with a guarantee that a person can always come back to their country of origin. In most cases, being a citizen prevents the state from expelling a person or extraditing them to another country. Yet in recent years, the status of citizenship has become ever less secure. With the growing number of armed conflicts and incidence of terrorism worldwide, many countries have introduced provisions for withdrawing the citizenship of a person on the basis of national security grounds. Over a third of the world’s countries, including many European states, can now strip a person of their citizenship when their actions are seen as disloyal or threatening to state security. Most of the provisions for stripping citizenship target persons who have naturalised, and not those who have been born as citizens. This indicates that – for most immigrants – the status of citizenship is not truly secure. Imagine two people – one born a citizen, one naturalised - committing the same act of treason against their state. While the ‘natural’ born citizen would be able to retain their citizenship, the naturalised one would lose it. This is discriminatory treatment. A further issue with citizenship revocation is the widespread absence of proper legal safeguards and protections against statelessness. People who gave up their citizenship of origin to be naturalised or people who the state considers to belong elsewhere are at a particular risk. 2