Stolen citizenship* Laura van Waas Introduction Exploring the relations of citizens to the state has been poignantly described by historian Linda Kerber as the study of “the largest questions of democracy”.1 In focusing on the revocation of citizenship, this Symposium cuts right to the deepest, darkest and most difficult of these questions. Indeed, if we understand citizens to be “the source of legitimate authority of democratic governments, then such governments should not have the power to redraw the boundaries of the citizenry through denationalisation”.2 Yet, the case studies in this symposium demonstrate that denationalisation has historically been, and continues today to be, deployed precisely for the purpose of redrawing the boundaries of the citizenry. Citizenship revocation is, in fact, instrumentalised to deny the identity, status and rights of individuals or groups who are deemed somehow threatening to, or incompatible with, the political community of the state as it is imagined by those who wield power. This contribution places the case studies in context by situating them against wider global trends in denationalisation and then offering some reflections on the mechanics of citizenship revocation that are brought to the fore in the case studies and are common also to situations beyond them. A Decade of Denationalisation In the June 2020 edition of its annual ‘Global Trends’ report on forced displacement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) included a special section reflecting on A Decade of Displacement.3 It sets out that from 2010 to 2019, at least 100 million people were forced to flee their homes and only a fraction of these “found a solution”. A worrying picture, leading High Commissioner Filippo Grandi to reflect that “we are witnessing a changed reality in that forced displacement nowadays is not only vastly more widespread but is simply no longer a short-term and temporary phenomenon”.4 UNHCR provides an annual update on statelessness in the same Global Trends report. However, in the section reflecting on the period of 2010 – 2019, the only information given on statelessness is that 754,500 stateless people obtained or confirmed a nationality over the course of the decade. This number is not set in context, making it difficult to evaluate the level of progress this equates to. Meanwhile, in the report chapter dedicated to statelessness, the narrative concentrates on the state of data on statelessness globally, rather than the state of the issue itself. *  The title for this piece takes its inspiration from the words of Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, who describes the deliberate production of Rohingya statelessness with the words “Our citizenship has been stolen from us”. As cited in Briefing Paper (2020) ‘Human Rights and Covid-19: What now for the Rohingya’, available at https://files.institutesi.org/Covid19_The_Rohingya_Briefing_Paper.pdf (accessed 3 November 2020). Tilburg University, Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion. 1 Reflecting on her “Life of Learning”, Kerber remarked that much of her own writing life was spent on these questions. Kerber, L. (2020), Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture, American Council of Learned Societies, Iowa, 28 October 2020. 2 Birnie, R. & Bauböck, R. (2020), ‘Introduction: expulsion and citizenship in the 21 st century’, Citizenship Studies 24(3): 271. 3 UNHCR (2020), ‘Global Trends: Forced displacement in 2019’, available at https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf (accessed 3 November 2020). 4 UNHCR (2020), ‘1 per cent of humanity is displaced: UNHCR Global Trends Report’, available at https://www.unhcr.org/neu/38233-1-per-cent-of-humanity-displaced-unhcr-global-trends-report.html (accessed 3 November 2020). 36