Stolen citizenship deliberately against the groups that had already been marked for exclusion, including by placing the burden of proof on individuals who “predictably” lacked the documentation required to prove their entitlement to citizenship. The scope for arbitrary decision-making and corruption was increased by the devolution to local government officials of decision-making authority (Syria) or the power to determine “indigeneity” (Nigeria) and of appeals proceedings to Foreigners Tribunals that treat as suspicious any claims in which even minor – e.g. spelling – errors arise (India). As the authors note, in none of the case studies included in this Symposium are formal citizenship deprivation procedures invoked. Instead, the criteria for citizenship are narrowed (in formulation or interpretation) and this is accompanied by what Burnley describes as an “opaque and processual” denationalisation, that unfolds through administrative practice. The third integral component of the mechanics of citizenship revocation is the rhetoric that facilitates and provides the justification for these other two linked developments. Who is worthy of citizenship, who belongs, comes to be linked to narrative constructs invoking indigeneity, ethnicity or religion. As shown in several of the case studies, those targeted for exclusion are re-imagined and branded as “aliens” or even “infiltrators”, who the state can and must uncover in order to legitimately correct their citizenship status accordingly. When these three constituent parts of the mechanics of denationalisation are unpacked – law, bureaucracy and rhetoric – then the measure itself comes into full view, as one that is used to deliberately target individuals or groups who have already been marked as not-fully-belonging. The parallels between the Symposium’s case studies and other situations, from other geographies and other moments in time, then also become easier to trace. So much of what has been identified in here in terms of the role of the law, of bureaucracy and of supporting narratives in enabling citizenship revocation in the case studies is also true, for instance, of the mass denationalisation of Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic18 or of the Lhotshampas in Bhutan.19 Importantly, this analytical lens challenges the often-assumed dichotomy between “non-Western” examples of denationalisation and the resurgence of citizenship stripping in the “West” as a counterterrorism. Burnley remarks, for example, that the Rohingya experience denationalisation “as an ongoing process rather than a distinct act, the latter of which characterises much of the citizenship revocation in richer countries”, before calling for investment in further comparative research of policies in the global south. However, the abundant scholarship that breaks down the targeting of terrorist suspects or ‘Foreign Fighters’ for denationalisation actually reveals a process that has many commonalities with the contributions to this Symposium.20 As Tendayi Achiume puts it, “in the context of counter-terrorism law and policy, where there are measures that strip people of nationality, ostensibly on national security grounds [these] nonetheless have racially, ethnically or religiously specified targets, that are also being identified in other discourses as threats to the nation”.21 The legislative changes that have brought in new or expanded powers to deprive citizens of their nationality as part of states’ counter-terrorism policy 18 For more on the parallels between the situation in the Dominican Republic and that in Myanmar and in India, see Arraiza, M., Sharikova, M. & Aye, P. (2020) ‘Statelessness motivated by nativism, racism and xenophobia: A comparison of Myanmar, the Dominican Republic and India’ in Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, The World’s Stateless. Deprivation of Nationality, 163-175. 19 Hutt, M. (2003) ‘Unbecoming Citizens. Culture, Nationhood, and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan’, Oxford University Press. 20 See, for instance, Macklin, A. (2014) ‘Citizenship Revocation, the Privilege to Have Rights and the Production of the Alien’, Queen’s LJ 40(1): 1-54; Van Waas, L. and Jaghai, S. (2018) ‘All Citizens are Created Equal, but Some are More Equal Than Others’, Netherlands International Law Review 65: 413–430; and Gibney, M. (2020) ‘Denationalisation and discrimination’, Journal of Ethical and Migration Studies 46(12): 2551-2568. 21 Interview with Tendayi Achiume, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (2020) ‘The World’s Stateless. Deprivation of Nationality’, p. 155. European University Institute 39