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Full Year

Citizenship Law: National and Global Perspectives (LAWS10231)

Subject

Law

College

CAHSS

Credits

40

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 Law courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses. This course is only open to visiting students who are nominated to study with us on a Law exchange agreement. Exchange students outside of Law and study abroad students are not eligible to enrol on this course before teaching begins, with no exceptions, and spaces cannot be guaranteed to those students at any time. **Please see Additional Restrictions**

Course Summary

Citizenship is a paradoxical legal and political concept: almost all of us have at least one citizenship (or nationality), but the basis on which we hold citizenship is often quite unclear to us. While most people obtain citizenship at birth through their parents, or through birth in a country, smaller numbers become citizens by naturalisation based on residence. Some countries put their citizenship on the market for investors to purchase like a luxury good. Others allow the descendants of those who left the country many generations before to become citizens, based on shared ethnicity. While states often regard citizenship as a strategic matter, we are also regularly asked to treat citizenship with some sort of reverence, as going to the heart of the state and its constitution. **This course places the law of citizenship in its wider legal and political context. While the course will use the citizenship law of the United Kingdom as the baseline for study, there will be a strong comparative element, with examples drawn from right across the globe. Important elements of international law and human rights law are drawn into the discussion, alongside national constitutional law.

Course Description

In the first semester, we introduce the basic principles underpinning the course and cover the different aspects of citizenship acquisition and loss systematically. In the second semester, we take a variety of thematic and geographical approaches. **Semester One Seminar Topics (allowing two seminars for introduction and revision) *1. What is citizenship? Basic terms such as citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, 'the people'; *2. The constitutional basis of citizenship; *3. Citizenship acquisition: by birth - ius soli and ius sanguinis; *4. Citizenship acquisition after birth: naturalisation; *5. Special topics: citizenship by investment, kin state citizenship, Olympic citizenship; *6. Loss of citizenship: voluntary and involuntary loss of citizenship; *7. Dual citizenship: towards an evolving global norm; *8. Statelessness. **Semester Two Seminar Topics (allowing one seminar for revision) *1. Citizenship rights, constitutional rights and human rights; *2. Citizenship and the pandemic: rights denied, status undermined? *3. Terrorism and loss of citizenship: a human rights challenge; *4. Citizenship in Latin America: the dominance of constitutional birthright ius soli; *5. Citizenship in India: from secularism to a populist approach; *6. Citizenship in Europe: the impact of the European Union on over-inclusive polities; *7. Citizenship in the Gulf: under-inclusive polities, statelessness and long term precarity; *8. Citizenship in Africa: the impact of regional human rights institutions on a post-colonial region; *9. Citizenship in East Asia and South East Asia: the challenge of citizenship under authoritarian constitutional regimes.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

**All 3rd year Law courses are ONLY open to visiting students nominated on an exchange agreement within the School of Law (including Erasmus students on a Law-specific exchange). Exchange students outside of Law, and independent study abroad students, are not eligible to enrol in these courses, with no exceptions.** Please note that 3rd year Law courses are high-demand, meaning that they have a very high number of students wishing to enrol in a very limited number of spaces. These enrolments are managed strictly by the CAHSS Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department, and all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. It is not appropriate for students to contact the Law School directly to request additional spaces. If there is sufficient space for other visiting students to enrol at the start of the semester (which cannot be guaranteed at all), visiting students must meet the pre-requisites listed above.

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