2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) Alison Harvey’s chapter in the first part of the volume shows the continued impact of past gender discrimination in the transmission of UK citizenship, as well as past discrimination against adopted children and children born out of wedlock. 6 While most of these discriminatory norms were removed in the 1980s, Harvey discusses the ongoing impact on those excluded from UK citizenship at the time. 7 Solange Valdez-Symonds discusses the ongoing barriers to citizenship for children born in the UK from non-citizen parents. 8 Such barriers include the high citizenship application fee for children of parents without indefinite leave to remain (declared illegal by the UK High Court in December 2019), the good character requirement, as well as the difficulty of producing documentary evidence for some groups. 9 Thom Brooks looks at the shortcomings — from factual errors to questionable conceptions of integration — of the various editions of the UK citizenship test, while Byrne presents the results of ethnographic work with applicants to UK citizenship. 10 Byrne’s interviews show a tension for the applicants between the appreciation of the security given by the UK passport — particularly with the rise of xenophobia in the UK — and the ambiguity of naturalising in a context that does not recognise their pre-naturalisation membership in the British society nor, to a degree, full membership after naturalisation. 11 The second and third parts of the volume include chapters dealing with citizenship, as well as chapters focusing more on immigration controls and in particular on the Hostile Environment policy announced by the British government in 2012 and implemented through subsequent legislative reforms. Colin Yeo discusses citizenship deprivation in the UK showing how, since the 2000s, the increased powers of the Home Secretary to deprive individuals of citizenship for issues of national interest and severe crimes have made UK citizens, and in particular naturalised and dual citizens, deportable on the basis of a growing list of crimes. 12 Patricia Mindus analyses ‘Brexit’— the exit of the UK from the European Union — as a collective loss of EU citizenship for UK citizens 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Alison Harvey, ‘Discrimination in British Nationality Law’ in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil: Theory, Practice and Policy (Edward Elgar 2019) 2. ibid. Solange Valdez-Symonds, ‘Children’s Rights to British Citizenship’ in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil: Theory, Practice and Policy (Edward Elgar 2019) 79, 79– 80. ibid 88; The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3536. This case found the high application fee for children registering as British citizens unlawful. Thom Brooks, ‘The Life in the UK Citizenship Test and the Urgent Need for its Reform’ in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil: Theory, Practice and Policy (Edward Elgat 2019) 22; Bridget Byrne, ‘Naturalisation and Becoming a Citizen in the UK’ in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil: Theory, Practice and Policy (Edward Elgar 2019) 61, 61–62. Byrne (n 10) 77–78. Colin Yeo, ‘The Rise of Modern Banishment: Deprivation and Nullification of British Citizenship’ in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil: Theory, Practice and Policy (Edward Elgar 2019) 134, 134–35. 186