The Weaponisation of More than Citizenship Eleanor Knott* I approach the topic of weaponised citizenship through an empirical – albeit critical – lens regarding the world how it is rather than through a normative lens of how the world ought to be. Neither approach or perspective is better or worse; both need the other for cross-fertilization of ideas and insights. Rather, I note my empirical perspective to indicate the position I come from when considering the concept of weaponised citizenship and assessing its utility in the contexts where I have researched dual citizenship. In this response, I do not dispute the usefulness of weaponised citizenship as a concept and political practice. Neha Jain indicates many poignant instances where weaponised citizenship has been used by states who hollow out, offshore, or impose citizenship as part of coercive, oppressive, and authoritarian politics.52 My point is that empirical nuance is needed when understanding actual or potential instances of weaponised citizenship. In particular, it is important to revisit when and under what conditions citizenship has been weaponised, such as in passportisation policies, which are the focus of my response. Adding empirical nuance is not only about disputing facts or laying bear that weaponisation of citizenship can occur before, or as a consequence of, conflict. Empirical nuance also demonstrates how it is not only citizenship that can be weaponised by authoritarian nationalist states. First, states like Russia are also weaponising fuzzier concepts of quasi-citizenship. While domestic law and international norms offer some legal codification of citizenship, there is no such codification for quasi-citizenship. Second, states like Russia (in particular) are weaponising ethno-nationalist claims offering protection – via annexation and conflict – to external co-ethnic communities, whether or not such external co-ethnic communities view themselves as needing, or consenting to, protection. Weaponisation of citizenship: before or after annexation? First, we should question what we know, or what we think we know, about when Crimea was passportised: whether before or after annexation. Suppose Crimea’s residents were passportised by Russia before annexation. In that case, this process points to very different analytical insights and alters our understanding of annexation and passportisation, compared to a situation where Crimea’s residents were passportised after annexation. In the former case, we would view passportisation as a precursor to annexation and as a sign of Crimea’s and Ukraine’s weakness vis-à-vis Russia. We might view Crimea’s residents’ Russian citizenship status as indicating that annexation was almost an inevitable consequence of passportisation as it may seem that Crimea’s residents supported annexation as Russian citizens. But, if Crimea’s residents were passportised after annexation, then we would view passportisation differently: as a consequence of annexation rather than a cause or a symptom of Ukraine’s weakness and as an imposed practice following annexation rather than preceding it. Neha Jain suggests that Russian passportisation preceded, and was a precursor of, Russia’s annexation of Crimea.53 In particular, drawing on Anne Peters, Jain suggests that Russian passportisation occurred in Crimea as early as 1991 and resulted in massive conferral of Russian citizenship.54 Moreover, Jain claims that passportisation in Crimea preceded – and thus repeated – that same policy in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after 2002, and before Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. The implication is that passportisation in Crimea was a long-standing policy of mass conferral of Russian citizenship in contested territories in the “near abroad” preceding invasion or annexation. * 52 53 54 11 London School of Economics Jain 2022. Id. Peters 2010. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies