The tactics and strategies of naturalisation: UK and EU27 citizens in the context of Brexit

ABSTRACT

Using in-depth interviews with British citizens in Belgium, British citizens in the UK who have explored applying for another citizenship and EU27 citizens in the UK, I explore how Brexit impacts decisions among the three groups on whether to apply for naturalisation. The Brexit process has introduced significant uncertainties about its outcome, its impact on the rights and mobility of the groups involved and, in the UK, about xenophobia and the economy. Most British interviewees have explored applying for the citizenship of an EU member state – including Belgium, but also Ireland, France or Italy – by residence, ancestry or marriage, in order to safeguard their rights. EU27 interviewees were more ambivalent about applying for UK citizenship, as citizenship would safeguard their rights, but they were uncertain about the desirability of remaining in the UK. I show that the uncertainties linked to the Brexit process make the naturalisation decision time-dependent, complex and uncertain. More generally, I propose to reconceptualise most naturalisation decisions as contingent, tentative and uncertain tactics, rather than well-calculated and foreseeable strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Brexit
• naturalisation
• citizenship
• EU citizenship
• tactics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgements

The research on which this article is based was made possible by a Newton International Fellowship of the British Academy and a postdoctoral fellowship of the F.R.S-FNRS. Early versions of this article have been presented at the MiTSoPro-CEDEM seminar ‘Multidimensionality of Citizenship: Status, Rights and Practices', Université de Liège, May 16 2019 and at the workshop ‘Citizens of Brexit: Exploring status, belonging and participation in Brexit times’, University of Manchester, October 22 2019. I thank the participants to the two events, including, but not only, Roxana Barbulescu, Angeliki Konstantinidou, Jeremy MacClancy, Daniela Vintila and Patrick Wautelet, and the anonymous reviewers of JEMS, for their useful comments.

Notes

1 De Certeau’s theoretical approach has been largely used to show how many among the everyday choices are tactical rather than strategic, including in the field of migration studies (see e.g. Lulle, Moroşanu, and King 2018; Kahveci, Karacan, and Kosnick 2020). The fact that most of my interviewees can be considered to have been tactical when deciding whether to naturalise is therefore hardly surprising. However, underlining the tactical nature of most naturalisations can help to correct the degree to which theoretical models of naturalisation continue to rely on simplified assumptions about rationality and decisional processes.

2 Beyond these cases, there was no clear link between length of residence and naturalisation intentions: those with less time in the UK were in some cases unwilling to reinforce their links with the country, but the interviewees who had taken the most concrete steps to leave the country had all more than 15 years in the country. Similarly, some of those with the longest residence in the UK were among those refusing explicitly to engage with the naturalisation process. Among the Britons in Belgium the only interviewees not to plan a naturalisation were a couple resident in Belgium since the early 1990s, who felt they were reasonably safeguarded by their length of residence.

3 I thank Patrick Wautelet for calling my attention to this latter point.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the British Academy under Grant NF171438 and the F.R.S-FNRS under Grant FC22951.