CITIZENSHIP STUDIES 267 Following this definition, citizenship has to do with the rights and duties of citizens in any particular context. In its formal legal sense, citizenship thus has a central place, not only defining and regulating the relationship between the individual and the state but also the means by which formal membership in a political community is defined and becomes a condition for full and meaningful participation in the polity. Control over the composition of the citizenry is one of the most effective ways of controlling the identity of the sovereign, while maintaining the formal roles of the democratic process (Masri 2017a). Pursuing this argument, I contend that the study of ‘citizenship’ in settler states must not begin at the moment of its formal formation and institutionalisation. Rather, it is an ongoing process built upon two opposing elements: the ‘negative’ – the violent elimination and practices of dispossession of native populations on the one hand, and the ‘positive’ – the formation of a new settler society in its place (Wolfe 2006). The one is dependent on the other, and cannot exist without it. This process begins before the establishment of the ‘polity’ – the settler state – and continues well beyond it. Indeed, violence is an integral part of ‘settler citizenship’ for without it would not come into existence, and with it, the goals of the settler state would remain unfulfilled. The role of violence in producing citizenship in settler states is commonly overlooked in citizenship studies scholarship. Such oversight can be found in the contribution by Isin and Turner (2007) to the tenth anniversary issue of the discipline’s flagship journal, Citizenship Studies. While reflecting on the development of citizenship throughout history, and particularly as an aspect of modern politics, Isin and Turner mention the American war of independence as one of the three revolutionary events that produced a particular formation of the notion of citizenship in the US. They overlook the fact that American independence from the British Crown was established via elimination of the native populations of ‘America’. They thus help reify the American myth that citizenship in the US is bound up with revolutionary idealism, rather than genocide and ethnic cleansing. Without the elimination of the native populations such revolutionary moments would not have been possible. It was these realities that gave way to the construction of a new settler society and finally to its independence. The drafting of the US constitution allowed extension of citizenship to new immigrants but not to indigenous populations. The role of violence in shaping this citizenship is left uninterrogated. Tatour’s (2019) work addresses this gap, asserting the centrality of colonial conquest in the production of citizenship in settler colonial contexts. Citizenship accordingly cannot be divorced from the violent processes of colonisation that preceded its foundation: [Citizenship] is doing what it was created to do: normalize domination, naturalize settler sovereignty, classify populations, produce difference, and exclude, racialize, and eliminate indigenous peoples (ibid., 11). Violence is constitutive of settler colonial citizenship, part and parcel of its foundation, and also an integral part of its function as a technology of the settler state. Since citizenship plays into the dual nature of the settler colonial project – the ‘negative’ and the ‘positive’ –