Laura van Waas has come under threat. For example, the secession of South Sudan left many at risk of statelessness, 12 while the denationalisation “Task Force” set up in the United States13 and the questioning of the status of “Windrush generation” in the United Kingdom14 have heralded problems for minority groups in those countries. Even as compared to other times in history when (mass) deprivation of nationality was also witnessed, such as in Syria in 1962 as set out in the Symposium contribution by Muhamad Alh,15 the decade 2010 – 2019 stands out because it is further characterised by a renaissance of individualised denationalisation. Journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders have been targeted, such as in Bahrain where citizenship stripping has been heavily instrumentalised since 2012 on the pretext of protecting national security.16 The increasing securitisation of citizenship policy is also evident in the Symposium contribution by MaryAnne Iwara, which describes the difficulties in accessing proof of citizenship status that have been encountered by returnees from abduction by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Denationalisation has also been adopted as an explicit counter-terrorism strategy, with at least fifteen countries amending their legislation over the course of the decade to expand executive or judiciary powers to deprive a citizen of their nationality as a national security measure.17 Studying the mechanics of citizenship revocation A central thread across the case studies in this Symposium, and evident in other situations of denationalisation beyond these, is the manner in which citizenship revocation is enabled and achieved through a trinity of law, bureaucracy and rhetoric. In all four of the country situations presented, the authors point to some form of legal basis that either paved the way for or consolidated the redrawing of the boundaries of the citizenry, to the exclusion of certain groups: the 1960 Citizenship law of Nigeria that invokes the notion of “indigenous communities” with lasting implications on who is treated as a citizen through the system of certificates of indigeneity, the 1962 Legislative Decree issued in Syria that provided the foundation for the exceptional census of the same year that catalysed the “Arabisation” of the Jazira region, the multiple citizenship law amendments in India through which a shift towards a more exclusive an ethnic conception of citizenship has been achieved, and the notorious 1982 Citizenship Law of Myanmar which redefined citizenship to the exclusion of anyone not belonging to official national ethnicities (taingyintha). In each of the case studies, the role attributed to bureaucracy in the process of casting out citizens stands out arguably more starkly than that of the legal frameworks themselves. Whether framed as “citizenship determination procedures” as in the case of Assam in India, as a “population census” as in the case of the Kurds of North East Syria or as a documentation project to “update” the system of identity cards as in the case of the Rohingya, the authors of the case studies show that such exercises are neither benignly administrative nor executed in a manner that accords with due process. The odds were stacked 12 UNHCR (2017) ‘A study of statelessness in South Sudan’, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/63857.pdf (accessed 3 November 2020). 13 Open Society Justice Initiative (2019) ‘Unmaking Americas. Insecure citizenship in the United States’, available at https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/e05c542e-0db4-40cc-a3ed-2d73abcfd37f/unmaking-americans-insecurecitizenship-in-the-united-states-report-20190916.pdf (accessed 3 November 2020). 14 Wray, H. (2018) ‘The ‘Windrush Generation’ and Citizenship’, Globalcit Blog, available at https://globalcit.eu/thewindrush-generation-and-citizenship/ (accessed 3 November 2020). 15 Other examples include several situations of mass denationalisation occurred during the 1980s: Feili Kurds in Iraq, Black Mauritanians in Mauritania and Lhotshampas in Bhutan. 16 See for an overview of cases the civil society initiative I am Bahraini, available at https://www.anabahraini.org/ (accessed 3 November 2020). 17 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (2020) ‘The World’s Stateless: Deprivation of nationality’, available at https://files.institutesi.org/WORLD's_STATELESS_2020.pdf (accessed 3 November 2020). 38 available at Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Working Papers