426 L. van Waas, S. Jaghai the law is battered, the door is open for political views that, while vehemently opposing such violent fundamentalists, mirror their culture essentialism: on their turn, populist politicians reject the idea of a free public space for all under the rule of law, and advocate an inward-looking nationalistic ideology. Thus, they undermine the idea of inclusive citizenship for all [and] paradoxically send out a message of confirmation to the terrorists that indeed a ‘clash of civilisations’ unfolds.63 It is this reading of the role and value of citizenship that underwrote Justin Trudeau’s memorable speech at a Town Hall meeting during his election campaign in September 2015, where he stated unequivocally: ‘A Canadian, is a Canadian, is a Canadian. You devalue the citizenship of every Canadian when you break down and make it conditional for anyone’.64 Following his election into office, Trudeau’s government succeeded in repealing the expanded deprivation powers that had been introduced with the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (SCCA) in 2015. While the trend at the time of writing is towards greater use of nationality deprivation as a security measure, the example of Canada shows that policy can be reversed and the democratic value of equal citizenship can be upheld. 5 Conclusion Citizenship has been described by Bauböck as having ‘an extremely sticky quality’.65 For most people, it indeed accompanies them unchanged and unchallenged throughout their lifetime and may therefore be experienced as a permanent and even immutable element of their identity. Yet, citizenship stripping is a measure that is as old as the existence of nationality law and seems to have always been an unequal measure—with some citizens holding a more precarious citizenship status than others. The contemporary trend towards the securitisation of nationality policy has, perhaps belatedly, drawn attention to the discriminatory effect of this inequality. It has also helped to make visible the wider context of ‘resurgent xenophobic and racist rhetoric and policies rooted in ethno-nationalism [that] not only harm noncitizens of any given nation [but] also make formal citizens who are ethnic, racial or religious minorities vulnerable to discrimination and intolerance’.66 Deprivation policies that target only naturalised or dual nationals have the effect of precluding the acceptance of these citizens as full citizens—undermining the function of naturalisation. The purpose of naturalisation processes is to affirm that a person has fully integrated into the community and is accepted as ‘one of us’. Once admitted, 63 Hirsch Ballin (2018), p. 4. Vice News, ‘“A Canadian Is a Canadian”: Liberal Leader Says Terrorists Should Keep Their Citizenship’, 28 September 2015, available at: https​://news.vice.com/artic​le/a-canad​ian-is-a-canad​ian-liber​ al-leade​r-says-terro​rists​-shoul​d-keep-their​-citiz​enshi​p (accessed 20 July 2018). 65 Bauböck (2015), p. 27. 66 UN Human Rights Council (2018), p. 14. 64 123