2021 STATELESSNESS AND THE CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT ACT, 2019 165 birth-based citizenship, termed jus soli.41 Under jus soli, citizenship is ascribed to an individual based on an objective criterion, usually, birth in the territory of a state.42 Rogers Brubaker has discussed the mismatch of constructing “insiders” and “outsiders” based on ethnicity.43 On the one hand, states use formal citizenship as a bright-line rule to segregate citizens or ‘insiders’ from non-citizens or ‘outsiders’, following jus soli.44 On the other hand, states that follow jus sanguinis base citizenship on ethnicity, and not on formal citizenship, as the bright-line rule between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’.45 In this latter scenario, ‘insiders’ are members of one specific ethnicity, whereas ‘outsiders’ are persons of other ethnicities.46 In this backdrop, Arendt argued that the post-war creation of ethnonationalist states posed an imminent threat to the rights of minorities in Europe.47 For Arendt, the absence of a political community for individuals meant that they cannot realise their rights.48 Thus, the nation-state, specifically an ethnic nation-state, was the only platform for individuals to realise their rights – an idea Arendt called the ‘right to have rights’.49 For her, the right to citizenship was the ‘right to have rights’, since it provided a gateway for individuals to access other rights.50 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 The foremost examples of countries that follow jus soli are the United Kingdom and the US as in Waas (n 39); Erin Blakemore, ‘Why the United States Has Birthright Citizenship’ (History Stories, May 12, 2020) <https://www.history.com/news/birthright-citizenship-history-united-states> accessed 28 July 2021; Christopher Lee, ‘Jus soli and jus sanguinis in the colonies: The Interwar Politics of Race, Culture and Multiracial Legal Status in British Africa’ [2011] 29 Law and History Review 497. Nuñez (n 38); Schuck and Smith (n 39). Rogers Brubaker, ‘Citizenship as social closure’ in Rogers Brubaker (ed), Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Harvard University Press 1998). ibid. ibid. ibid; Fitzgerald (n 32). Arendt (n 32). Arendt (n 32); for Arendt, the absence of the ethnonationalist state meant that individuals do not have a “place in the world” to express opinions, participate in public life and exercise rights. A “place in the world”, then, means both the territory of the political community and a place of lawful residence as in Alison Kesby, The Right to Have Rights Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law (OUP 2012); Brubaker and Laitin, and Bosniak make similar arguments as in Rogers Brubaker and David Laitin, ‘Ethic and Nationalist Violence’ [1998] 24 Annual Review of Sociology 423; Linda Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized (the State of Citizenship Symposium)’ [2000] 7 Journal of Global Legal Studies 447. Arendt (n 32); Leila Azar, ‘Hannah Arendt: The Right to Have Rights’ (Critical Legal Thinking, 12 July 2019) <https://criticallegalthinking.com/2019/07/12/hannah-arendt-right-tohave-rights/> accessed 28 July 2021. Arendt (n 32); for Arendt, individuals are not born equal with inherent human rights; rather, they realised rights through their political communities. She was not convinced in the idea of ‘universal’ human rights as in Arendt (n 32); see generally Jeffrey Isaac, ‘A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on Human Dignity and the Politics of Human Rights’ [1996] 90