1644 Jo Shaw A further area of citizenship practice to feel the effects of COVID-19 has been that of naturalization. There have been delays to naturalization processes because of the inability to fulfil the social aspects of citizenship acquisition including handshakes or in person ceremonies, as well as problems obtaining (and indeed renewing) passports. These are all more likely to pose substantial challenges for those who find themselves at the margins or “fringes” of citizenship.48 That would include some of those who are seeking to gain citizenship by naturalization based on regular lawful residence and the fulfilment of other conditions because of their status as migrants in the host polity. So, for example, delays and obstacles may cause problems for those who risk clocking up too many days spent outside the host country because of pandemic-related travel restrictions or for young people who can no longer roll their own naturalization under the banner of those of their parents because they have passed a certain age limit. During the pandemic, states have often been slow to rethink their approaches. Thus Ireland, which already has a notoriously slow naturalization process, stopped in person ceremonies at the inception of the pandemic. It was only in January 2021, by which time there was a backlog of 24,000 applications and 4,000 applications which were “ceremony-ready,” that the national authorities replaced the ceremony with a temporary process based on a statutory declaration.49 Furthermore, the pandemic, which has changed social behaviors in so many areas, has inevitably raised questions about why handshakes may still be seen as a necessary part of a citizenship acquisition process in circumstances where handshakes have come to be seen as potential vectors of infection. Similar questions have been raised about the intersection between citizenship and veiling, given that in a number of countries the wearing of a face-covering such as the burqa and the niqab has been prohibited or regarded as a factor that could exclude the wearer from access to the host state citizenship via naturalization.50 In many countries, the wearing of a face covering as infection protection measure has become a normal practice. In some cases, the practice may extend—as has already been the case in East Asia—well beyond the parameters of the present pandemic. It might be argued that the adoption of face coverings for infection protection as standard practice should lead to questions about why other types of face coverings are seen in some countries with Muslim minorities as evidence of bad, not good, citizenship. It does not seem likely that the pandemic will generate new insights into the paradox that some face coverings are banned and others are compulsory in certain circumstances. Indeed, in the midst of the pandemic, Swiss citizens voted in a nationwide referendum in favor of a prohibition on the wearing of face coverings in public, unless this was for a health protection purpose. This is a clear step towards generating greater marginalization for the tiny minority of women of Islamic faith in that country who would choose to wear a face-covering burqa or hijab for religious reasons when in public.51 It would be incorrect to assume that all linear consequences of measures taken in relation to the pandemic as regards citizenship are in fact rights-restrictionist. In some cases, the enhancing of national and other solidarities, which many regard as central to combatting COVID-19,52 has given rise to what might be described as generous responses. Early on during the initial “first COVID-19 on the Nexus of Statelessness and Health in Council of Europe Member States, 4 J. MIGRATION AND HEALTH 100053 (2021); Talha Burki, Statelessness in the COVID-19 Pandemic, 397 THE LANCET 10284, 1529 (2021). 48 JULIJA SARDELIĆ, THE FRINGES OF CITIZENSHIP (Manchester Univ. Press 2021). 49 Sorcha Pollak, Temporary System to Process 4,000 Irish Citizenship Applications, THE IRISH TIMES (Jan. 18, 2021), https://www. irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/temporary-system-to-process-4-000-irish-citizenship-applications-1.4461171. For details, see Press Release, Dep't J. Ir., Minister McEntee Opens Temporary Process for Granting Citizenship During COVID-19 (July 22, 2021), https://www.irishimmigration.ie/minister-mcentee-opens-temporary-process-for-granting-citizenship-during-covid-19/. 50 See SHAW, supra note 25, at 82–85. 51 Rim-Sarah Alouane, Where Face Masks Are Required But Burqas Are Banned, FOREIGN POL’Y MAG. (Mar. 2021), https:// foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/10/switzerland-europe-burqa-ban-referendum-coronavirus-face-masks-egerkinger-komitee/. 52 Jean-Paul Gagnon, Rikki Dean, Afsoun Afsahi, Emily Beausoleil & Selen Ecran, Five Lessons for Democracy From the Covid-19 Pandemic: An International Evaluation of Democracy in Crisis, PUB. SEMINAR (Oct. 29, 2020), https:// publicseminar.org/essays/five-lessons-for-democracy-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/. https://doi.org/10.1017/glj.2021.77 Published online by Cambridge University Press