Citizenship as a Conditional Privilege or Right: Loss of Nationality in Germany and the UK

The literature on citizenship has focused on the acquisition of citizenship and neglected loss of nationality.  The few exceptions to this pattern either focus on a single country or, if comparative, limit themselves to an analysis of current citizenship laws and practices.  This paper will analyze the development of German and British laws on the loss of nationality since 1870.  The most controversial parts of Germany’s citizenship law today are provisions which result in the automatic loss of German nationality if a German citizen acquires another nationality.  After 9/11 Britain changed its laws to give the British government the power to denationalize even native-born citizens.  Rainer Bauböck and Maarten Vink have constructed a set of citizenship law indicators for 36 European states.  Their indicators for how easy it is to renounce citizenship and how well citizens are protected against involuntary loss of citizenship show clear differences between Germany and the UK, with the UK at the more liberal end of the spectrum.  In regard to the acquisition of citizenship it has often been argued that Germany’s citizenship laws reflect an enduring ethnocultural understanding of nationhood/citizenship.  This argument in turn has been criticized for its neglect of historical variation.  I will extend Bauböck and Vink’s citizenship law indicators into the past for at least these two countries and collect data for prior time periods.  This allows me to analyze variation in laws on loss of nationality over time and evaluate claims that laws on nationality loss reflect different conceptions of nationhood.