Comparative regional report on citizenship law: Anglophone Caribbean The shared colonial heritage also makes the region have distinct provisions for individuals who were born prior to, and after Independence. Typically, the ability to acquire citizenship (especially for the relatives and spouses of a citizen) was automatic during the Independence era, but became a process of registration in the post-Independence era. Throughout the subregion, with very limited exceptions, Commonwealth citizens also enjoy special registration procedures because of this colonial legacy as well. The colonial influence also impacts the gendered nature of some nationality provisions, especially in countries like The Bahamas and, to a lesser degree, Barbados and others in the area. As has been posited by scholars, the non-white, male political elite who inherited the Westminster-style systems and laws in these countries did not necessarily espouse gender equality at Independence. In fact, “West Indian progress and readiness for self-government depended on black men behaving like men: leading their families, under the aegis of marriage, and containing what was seen as the capaciousness of black womanhood” (Robinson 2008, 748).2 Thus, making gender equality a political non-issue among most male elites at the time. Although The Bahamas contains the most glaring gender discriminatory provisions in its laws (especially with regard to the inability of Bahamian women to pass their nationality on to their children and foreign husbands on an equal footing to their male counterparts), the report illustrates how other countries in the subregion continue to allow for gender discrimination in their laws (whether in cases of joint adoption, the extension of citizenship to noncitizen husbands, or transfer of citizenship through a deceased parent). While some countries in the subregion are restrictive when it comes to women’s rights to pass on citizenship, the Anglophone Caribbean is far more open in providing noncitizens’ access to citizenship via CBI programmes. Although only five countries have operational CBI programmes, as a proportion of the world’s total number of such programmes, the Anglophone Caribbean accounts for the majority of countries at 38%.3 Although not a characteristic of the region���s citizenship laws per se, the Anglophone Caribbean experiences mixed migratory movement and is a high-volume tourist destination. These two features make for circumstances wherein the “noncitizen Other” is present on its territories in varying degrees throughout the year. As noted later in the report, with the exception of The Bahamas, the subregion has strong ius soli provisions, ensuring, in theory at least, that children born of noncitizens are provided a nationality at birth, regardless of their parent(s)’ citizenship status. That said, transparent and publicly available data is generally lacking on citizenship acquisition (by immigration status or by parent(s)’ country of nationality). Thus, it is unclear how these ius soli provisions apply in practice to the children born of undocumented or “unauthorised” migrants. Similarly, publicly available and transparent data is generally unavailable on the number of citizenship grants provided to (“political”) refugees and stateless persons in those countries that have provisions for their registration. Of the 12 countries, only three (Guyana, Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) have ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (United Nations 1990), which stipulates, “Each child of a migrant worker shall have the right to a 2 3 2 See also Kamugisha (2007). Thirteen countries have CBI programmes globally. See Financial Times, Ltd. (2019) for further information. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2020/3 - © 2020 Authors