CITIZENSHIP: FROM RIGHT TO PRIVILEGE > A lawyer who specialises in immigration and citizenship observed that ‘There is no recognition or protection of the right of dissent in the context of acquiring or losing citizenship – there is real fear in migrant communities, for example about demonstrating anger about Afghanistan ... If communities are frightened to speak out about things like that, while the rest of us can, it fosters division’;43 > Others point out the dangers of making one racialised group feel that they don’t really belong and will never really be considered British, even if they were born and brought up here. The message sent by the legislation on deprivation of citizenship since 2002 and its implementation largely against British Muslims of south Asian heritage is that, despite their passports, these people are not and can never be ‘true’ citizens, in the same way that ‘natives’ are. While a ‘native’ British citizen, who has access to no other citizenship, can commit the most heinous crimes without jeopardising his right to remain British, none of the estimated six million British citizens with access to another citizenship can feel confident in the perpetual nature of their citizenship. This message, directed along with so many other warnings from politicians and media towards Britain’s ethnic minority communities, is not lost on ‘native Brits’, for whom a quasi-imperial sense of entitlement and superiority is reinforced. This gives a fillip to the far Right, who feel justified and vindicated in their racist attacks and ‘crusades against Islam’ as they see politicians repeating their message. The very public performance by Sajid Javid of stripping the teenager Shamima Begum of her citizenship in 2019, in response to the outburst of racialised outrage whipped up by the media (as detailed below), reinforced the vulnerability of the one group and the invulnerability and sense of superiority of the other. Racialised citizenship rights do not exist in a vacuum, but in conjunction with racialised ‘hostile environment’ anti-refugee and migrant policies and discriminatory policing practices. Taken together, they result in Black and brown British citizens having to prove their entitlement to be in the country, to obtain housing, health care, employment, education, bank account, the right to marry etc. All this is self-reinforcing: the more checks are required, the more suspicion is created – and the less ‘British’ racialised groups feel. 4. Muslims as suspects The deprivation provisions of 2002 onwards, along with the measures making citizenship harder to acquire, such as the ‘life in Britain’ test, are just one aspect of measures targeting Muslim communities, in Britain and abroad, in the past two decades, which have helped to turn British Muslims in the UK into a ‘suspect community’: 43 Amanda Weston, ‘Deprivation of citizenship – by stealth’, IRR News, June 2011. 14