Framing deprivation of citizenship in parliamentary debates in
France and the United Kingdom
from counterterrorism to defining the Nation and its boundaries
Author: Stefane de Moura
Master thesis Political Science – specialization Political Theory Completed in June 2020
Supervisor: Franca van Hooren Second reader: Saskia Bonjour
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations………...3
Introduction……….4
Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework……….6
Chapter 2: Research Design………...15
Chapter 3: The Context of the Parliamentary Debates………..22
Chapter 4: Critical Frame Analysis………...29
Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations………....47
Bibliography……….49
Annex 1……….…51
List of abbreviations: AN: Assemblée Nationale HC: House of Commons HL: House of Lords
MPs: Members of Parliament UK: United Kingdom
Introduction
This thesis looks at the deprivation of citizenship debates that took place in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2014 and in France between November 2015 and March 2016. The comparison came from wondering why two countries that are similar in a lot of ways differ when it comes to deprivation of citizenship. The UK was successful in passing in 2014 one of the most extreme deprivation of citizenship laws in Europe: deprivation was allowed for naturalized citizens, even if the consequence was that the individual concerned would be left stateless as a result (UK Immigration Act 2014, Clause 66). On the other hand, a constitutional revision was proposed in France in 2015 which contained an amendment aiming to add deprivation of citizenship to the Constitution and inspired a controversial debate before being finally withdrawn by President Hollande at the end of March 2016 (Projet de loi constitutionnelle de la Nation (original proposal), 2015)1.
Deprivation of citizenship is defined by Sandra Mantu as ‘a type of loss of citizenship and refers to the power of the executive to take away or strip citizenship against the wishes of the person concerned’ (Mantu, 2015, p.3). The main characteristic of deprivation of citizenship is the fact that the individual is acted upon in this case: it is not by his wish that the citizenship is lost. Deprivation of citizenship is common when the citizenship was obtained for fraud for example, but it can also happen when the individual commits a crime that goes against the interests of the state whose nationality he possesses.
The main focus of this thesis is deprivation of citizenship in cases of terrorism, which is considered as such a crime against the interests of the state.
Previous research has focused on the shift in legislation on deprivation of citizenship that the UK recently underwent and on deprivation of citizenship related to terrorism more generally (Mantu, 2014; Mantu, 2015; Mantu, 2018; Joppke, 2016). Research has also focused specifically on comparing the French and British cases (Mills, 2016; Fargues 2017). However, the more general question of why and how states deprive persons of citizenship, the ‘politics of deprivation of citizenship’ does not seem to be the focus of interest of political science scholars.
This thesis contributes to filling this gap in the literature with a critical frame analysis of the parliamentary debates on deprivation of citizenship legislation that took place in the UK and in France.
In this research, I focus on parliamentary debates which are important to understand the conceptions that each state has of deprivation of citizenship, through the discourse of the Members of Parliament (MPs) and to understand why a new legislation on deprivation of citizenship was successful in the UK and not in France, as Parliament is the place where the legislation was adopted or rejected.
This thesis is centered around the research question: how have parliamentary debates around deprivation of citizenship in the UK and France differed and how do these differences relate to different policy outcomes?
To answer this question, I use critical frame analysis, a tool for qualitative research, to understand the parliamentary debates around deprivation of citizenship (Lombardo & Verloo, 2007). I analyze the parliamentary debates on Immigration Act 2014 that concern Clause 66 on deprivation of citizenship, and the parliamentary debates on the Loi de Protection de la Nation (Law of Protection of the Nation) that concern article 2 on deprivation of citizenship.
The analysis of the debates highlights the use of national security and national unity as frames defending the new deprivation of citizenship legislation, but also the impact of party affiliation, namely right and left-wing, on the proposal of a deprivation of citizenship legislation. Moreover, the reference to obligations in international law in the debates lead to questioning how effective international conventions prohibiting statelessness are. The parliamentary debates on deprivation of citizenship also highlight that deprivation led to a further debate about defining the Nation and who belongs to it.
This thesis’s first part is a theoretical framework which explores different concepts of citizenship and analyzes the current literature on deprivation of citizenship. This is followed by a second chapter on the research design which explains the methodology as well as the data used. The third chapter explains the context of the parliamentary debates.
Chapter four is the critical frame analysis and finally chapter five contains the conclusions and recommendations for future research.
Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework
This theoretical framework contains first a discussion on the concept of citizenship and how it relates to the possibility of deprivation of citizenship. This is followed by an analysis of the main arguments in favour and against deprivation of citizenship, and of criticism of deprivation of citizenship as discriminatory. Finally, recent findings of research focusing on the British and French case are discussed.
1.1.Conceptions of citizenship
Deprivation of citizenship is a somewhat recent research interest amongst scholars, which means that there are yet to be found theories about deprivation of citizenship in itself. We can however relate deprivation of citizenship to different conceptions of citizenship: citizenship as the right to have rights, citizenship as consent and citizenship as contractarian.
1.1.1. Citizenship as the right to have rights
Hannah Arendt’s conception of citizenship is without doubt one of the most influential. The question of deprivation of citizenship posed problem during the mid-twentieth century, related to the second world war and totalitarian regimes. Arendt studied citizenship regarding the deprivation of citizenship of Jewish Germans and more generally political opponents in Europe. She famously considered citizenship as ‘the right to have rights’ meaning that she defined citizenship as a requirement for a person to be able to hold any other rights (Arendt, 1948, chap.9). Her definition seems still extremely relevant, because a person who cannot depend on any state, that no state can account for is a person who is extremely vulnerable in the international sphere and has little rights guaranteed: in some cases, these persons can even be endangered without citizenship (Woods, Ross & Wright, 2013). Arendt views citizenship as a meta-right, on which all other rights are based.
Her work on this issue also influenced the drafting and subsequent adoption of the 1961 UN Convention on the reduction of statelessness and more recently the 1997 European Convention on Nationality which also prohibits statelessness (UN, 1961; EU, 1997). Although both are international law instruments and as such have a somewhat limited power to coerce states since
they can choose to exercise some reservations on certain clauses, both are important texts in preventing statelessness.
Building on Arendt’s conception of citizenship, there seems to be on one side an agreement that citizenship is the ‘right to have rights’ with for example Coca-Vila who describes it as ‘an organic element of personal identity’ and Mantu who sees it as ‘a stable and secure legal status that entitles its carrier to the protection of his state of nationality’ in comparison ‘to the legal position of foreigners’ (Coca-Vila, 2019, p.4; Mantu, 2015, p.5).
1.1.2. Citizenship as a contract and citizenship as communitarian
On the other hand, authors such as Joppke view Arendt’s conception of citizenship as less than ideal: he argues against the idea that ‘citizenship is (or should be) an unconditional and unalienable property of the individual’ when discussing deprivation of citizenship as a counterterrorism tool (Joppke, 2016, p.742). Joppke conceptualizes citizenship today as more of a ‘contract’ than as a right (Joppke, 2016, p.742).
This view of citizenship as a contract can be viewed for example when it comes to naturalized citizens: they contracted explicitly with the state in question, whereas native citizens were merely born in the state to acquire the citizenship. This contract between naturalized citizens and the state serves as an argument for a sense of loyalty and for the possibility to deprive them of citizenship when they act against the state and its interests. Joppke quotes Weil’s comparison of the contractarian conception of citizenship to a club, according to which it is: ‘both a club that limits entrance from outsiders and a public good that places no inherent limits to the secured rights of its members’ (Weil, 2013, p.183).
This conception of citizenship as a contract can be seen for example in the possibility to deprive naturalized citizens both in France and the UK.
When discussing the Afroyim judgment in the American Supreme Court, judgment that prohibits deprivation of citizenship, Aleinikoff brings up the communitarian perspective of citizenship in relation to the possibility of deprivation (Aleinikoff, 1986, p.1494). This conception sees the individual’s relationship with the state based on ‘his identification with and immersion in the society’s history, traditions, and core assumptions and purposes’ and as ‘an organic relationship between the citizen and the state (idem). For Aleinikoff, considering citizenship as communitarian means first of all that deprivation of citizenship can ‘intrude upon
a person’s conception of self’ so that when an individual is deprived ‘a part of oneself is gone’ (idem, p.1495). On the other hand, Aleinikoff also argues that ‘the state has helped to endow the citizens with a set of values and relationships that precede any conscious choice by the citizen (at least a citizen at birth). In much the same way that the parent is responsible for the child, so the state is responsible for the citizen’ (idem, p. 1496). This conception of citizenship as communitarian is more applicable to the individual born in the state: in this sense it provides an argument against the deprivation of mono-citizens who are native to the state and dual citizens also born in the state. This conception does not apply to the UK, since its legislation allows for deprivation of dual citizens native to the state, but it does apply to France who does not deprive native citizens.
1.1.3. Bauböck and Paskalev: a modern classification of deprivation of citizenship
More recently, authors have also tried to conceptualize citizenship and deprivation of citizenship. An interesting example is the work of Bauböck and Paskalev, who analyze citizenship from a political theory perspective (2015). More precisely, their research focuses on ‘how deprivation policies reflect specific conceptions of political community’ (idem, p.47). First of all, the authors offer an interesting typology of ‘basic conceptions of citizenship’ that they have chosen not to associate ‘with any stable and coherent national models’ (idem, p.61). The four conceptions of citizenship by Bauböck and Paskalev are ‘state discretion’, ‘individual choice’, ‘ascriptive community’ and ‘genuine link’ (idem, pp. 63-67). They come up with this typology based on a distinction they make between the possibility of a ‘prior special relationship between an individual and the state’ or a more ‘generic’ relationship between the individual and the state (idem, p.61).
For Bauböck and Paskalev, states who adhere to the ‘state discretion’ conception of citizenship deprive under the justification of ‘public security grounds’ notably (idem, p.63). For states conceptualizing citizenship as an ‘individual choice’, according to Bauböck and Paskalev ‘states should have minimal powers to strip individuals of their citizenship without their will’ (idem, p.64). For states who conceptualize citizenship following the ascriptive model, the implications for deprivation are a bit more ambiguous according to the authors. Since ascriptive communities ‘can be based on immutable identity features, such as descent or birthplace’, ‘in a strictly ascriptive model, citizenship loss would not occur’ but the authors allow that in practice persons can change their citizenship status voluntarily and ‘if membership in a community were based on shared values, then it might expel those whose actions violate its values in a way that
seriously jeopardizes them’(idem, pp.65-66). In the case of a conception based on genuine link, the authors consider that ‘involuntary deprivation will be generally justified on the basis of loss of a genuine link while all other grounds will be considered suspect’ (idem, p.67).
They give the example of the UK as a state that conceptualizes citizenship with ‘state discretion’, in the sense that the UK has a lot of ‘executive and administrative discretion’, but also has a ‘lack of a written constitution and the principle of parliamentary sovereignty’ (idem, p.63). I agree with that description, especially since Immigration Act 2014 further extends the power of the Home Secretary when it comes to deprivation of citizenship (Clause 66).
Bauböck and Paskalev do not classify France, but using their descriptions of conceptions of citizenship, I would classify it as following the ascriptive model, according to which ‘the most plausible implication of an ascriptive conception of citizenship is that it lends itself to drawing distinctions between citizens by ascription and citizens by choice, and it allows for banishment of the latter category in cases where their actions demonstrate disloyalty or seriously threaten public interests’ (idem, p.66). This describes the situation in France, where only naturalized citizens can be deprived of their citizenship in cases of terrorism.
These different conceptions of citizenship relate to the subsequent parts of this thesis. First of all, citizenship as the right to have rights and the international conventions preventing statelessness are an important part of the parliamentary debates both in France and the UK. Moreover, seeing citizenship conceptualized as a contract and as communitarian, as well as Bauböck and Paskalev’s classification puts the parliamentary debates in relation with the states’ conceptions of citizenship. The UK and France appear to both adhere to citizenship as a contract, having the possibility to deprive naturalized citizens. However, France’s conception leans more towards that of a communitarian or ascriptive conception, expressed with the impossibility to deprive dual nationals under French law, whereas the UK extends its deprivation regime to British natives who are dual nationals, conceptualizing citizenship with state discretion.
1.2. Arguments in favour and against deprivation in the literature
After taking a look at relevant conceptions of citizenship, it seems also pertinent to wonder whether there is a consensus amongst authors on the legitimacy and usefulness of deprivation of citizenship in liberal democracies.
1.2.1. Against deprivation of citizenship
On one hand, it seems that there is generally a trend for authors to oppose deprivation of citizenship. We can see for example an argument against deprivation of citizenship that is based on human rights concerns, inspired by Arendt’s conception: authors such as Sandra Mantu wonder if terrorists should be stripped of citizenship, when it is in itself ‘the right to have rights’ (Mantu, 2018). This argument is closely linked to international law conventions and the fear of creating stateless individuals.
Another argument is that deprivation of citizenship simply transfers the responsibility from one state to another to deal with the person in question, and if a person happens to be a citizen of two states that allow for deprivation of citizenship, there is a risk that this will ensue a race ‘to see which country can strip citizenship first’ (Bauböck & Macklin, 2015, p.6).
Generally, amongst the harshest critics of deprivation of citizenship, the belief is that ‘it is an illegitimate form of punishment and it serves no practical purpose’ and that simply put, deprivation of citizenship ‘weakens citizenship itself’ (idem, p.1).
Moreover, deprivation of citizenship is also criticized with the inequality argument: that is, the fact that in most states where deprivation of citizenship is possible, it is only applied to dual citizens or naturalized citizens as states do not want to make persons stateless. Some authors argue that ‘we may be entering a third stage in which dual citizenship can once again become a liability’ (Baubock & Paskalev, 2015, p.52).
Although Joppke, discussed above, believes that banishment is ‘the adequate response to terrorism’, he agrees that it might not be the best thing to do (Joppke, 2016, p.743). He recognizes the problems associated with deprivation of citizenship as a response to terrorism, such as the previously mentioned possibility that all states would deprive terrorists of citizenship and none would take responsibility for them, or the problem of effectiveness of stripping someone of their citizenship when that person is ready to die for the jihad. But, Joppke doesn’t fully convince when discussing the ‘social divisiveness’ of such measures: he argues that it is ‘no deliberate discrimination but unavoidable consequence of abiding by international law’ (idem, p. 745). In the case of the UK for example, the Immigration Act 2014 allows the Home Secretary to deprive of citizenship even if it creates stateless individuals: changing the legislation was not done in the purpose of abiding by international law, but of using the
reservations to extend deprivation to the possibility of statelessness, it seems hardly like an ‘unavoidable consequence’ in this case.
In general, there seems to be an idea that deprivation of citizenship can weaken citizenship and create inequality amongst different citizens of a state.
1.2.2. In favor of deprivation of citizenship
On the other hand, some other authors have tried to analyze justifications for deprivation of citizenship. Gibney’s work is a good example of this, although it is important to mention that the author is critical of the power of deprivation (2013). Although Gibney’s article was published in 2013 and the state of deprivation of citizenship has changed since then (with the 2014 Immigration Act in the UK and the debate on deprivation of citizenship in France in 2016 notably), his work still explores some relevant aspects of deprivation of citizenship.
Gibney discusses ‘the normative issues associated with the withdrawal rather than the acquisition of citizenship’ (idem, p.646). He first of all examines the different liberal justifications for deprivation of citizenship, while mentioning a historical perspective where the idea that states have the right to take citizenship away was ‘relatively uncontroversial’ before becoming controversial in the face of human rights concerns (idem, p.650). Now again, liberal states are considering or putting into effect legislation to deprive persons of citizenship related to counterterrorism measures. A first argument in favour of deprivation is thus that the concept is part of a long tradition, and not a new power in liberal democracies.
Then, deprivation of citizenship can be argued on the grounds of a contractual conception of citizenship (discussed above). Deprivation here is based on ‘the view that the state involves an (implicit) contract amongst individuals’, a contract that ‘involves reciprocal rights and duties’: the deprived is here the one that has breached this contract, which implies that the state is in its (sovereign) right to deprive (idem, p.650).
Moreover, Gibney also mentions dual nationals and argues that there is ‘nothing intrinsically invidious’ about focusing deprivation of citizenship on dual nationals, when discussing the UK Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002 (idem, p.655). He justifies this argument by the fact that we can see ‘a second nationality as a privilege giving its holders benefits single nationals lack’ and that the possibility of dual citizens to lose their nationality ‘equalizes their status to other citizens rather than making it inferior’ (idem). I find this argument somewhat
unsatisfactory as it ignores for example the fact that not every citizenship has the same ‘worth’: for example when it comes to human rights protections, some states simply do not have the same means to uphold them as a state such as the UK. On top of this, depriving only dual nationals creates difficulties when it comes to ‘justice’, which Gibney is also aware of (idem).
To conclude this section, after an examination of the two ‘camps’ of thought regarding deprivation of citizenship, the main concerns raised by the literature are statelessness and the possibility of inequalities generated by only depriving certain persons, whereas the main argument in favour relies on a contractual conception of citizenship.
1.3. The criticism of deprivation of citizenship as discriminatory
As seen in the previous section, deprivation of citizenship is argued against on the argument of the creation of inequalities between citizens, or of a second-class citizenship for naturalized citizens and dual nationals. But who exactly is this citizen concerned? The recent resurgence of deprivation of citizenship as a counterterrorism measure is rooted in the post 9/11 context, marked by extremist Muslim terrorism. Thus, it seems that the citizens most targeted by deprivation of citizenship are Muslims or have an immigration background from North Africa and the Middle East. It is the view for example of Choudhury who considers the use of deprivation of citizenship, more precisely relating ot the UK, as ‘echoing a colonial history of governing through a racialized conception of social order’ (Choudhury, 2017, p.226).
Choudhury goes as far as to conceptualize citizenship as ‘not a protected right but a reward for conformity to the bounds of government-defined acceptable behaviour’, which relates to the contractarian conception of citizenship (idem). Choudhury raises the interesting point that ‘in Britain, denationalisation and exile, as tools of counter-terrorism policy, were not used during the conflict in Northern Ireland but are increasingly being used against British Muslims’ (idem, p. 228).
Moreover, Choudhury adds the idea of British values: ‘the radicalised British Muslim, perceived as lacking British values, signals the ultimate failure of social policy to reform and integrate ‘deviants’ and so no longer deserves British citizenship’ (idem, p.229).
Similar research on a comparison of deprivation of citizenship in France and the UK have also arrived at similar conclusions: Fargues talks about the ‘re-ethnicization’ of citizenship for
example, and Mills also stresses that the target of these new deprivation of citizenship proposals are ‘Islamist terrorism’ (Fargues, 2017: Mills, 2016).
This part of the literature shows us that the target of deprivation of citizenship legislation is highly controversial, and that the choice of who is deprived might be a debate extending over mere deprivation of citizenship.
1.4. Main findings of previous research comparing deprivation of citizenship in France and the UK
After looking at more general arguments in favour of and criticizing deprivation of citizenship, this subpart focuses on more specific recent findings.
First of all, an article of Fargues analyzes deprivation of citizenship by comparing the UK and France and the changes in their legislation in recent years (2017). His research is an analysis of parliamentary debates, legal cases and interviews from the mid-1990s until 2016.
Fargues’ main finding is that the British and French deprivation policies ‘rationalize citizenship’ (2017, p.993). Moreover, he also argues that ‘citizenship stripping creates a more or less secure category of citizens, as if some were inherently more suspicious than others’ and rejects the idea ‘that France and the UK represent two models of deprivation (punitive vs. preventive)’ saying that in both states ‘the objective remains the same: removing individuals whom the authorities perceive as a threat’ (idem, pp. 993-994).
The research that this thesis entails differs from Fargues’ in the sense that he analyzes more specifically deprivation of citizenship legislation, whereas I focus only on the parliamentary debates and their consequence on policy outcome. In this sense, his results are helpful in having a wider view of the picture of deprivation of citizenship. Moreover, while my analysis does not focus on the immigration regime angle that Fargues adopt, I draw from his conclusion of the ‘re-ehtnization’ of citizenship.
Another interesting article is that of Mills, who argues precisely that the crucial difference between the states is that they ‘proposed to re-introduce citizenship withdrawal as an extension of two different immigration control regimes’ (2016, p.1).
I like from Mills’ approach that she also analyzes the media coverage of the deprivation of citizenship debates, which I think also gives a clearer view: I think that such an analysis only adds to the analysis of the parliamentary debates, and if I did not entail to do so with this thesis,
it is only because of time and word limit constraints. However, what I do miss from Mills’ research is a more in depth analysis of the French case, as she mostly focused on the British case. I argue that in doing so she missed some points that were relevant to the debate in France, such as looking at the influence that the French constitution as a symbol had and at the divide in the Parti Socialiste that the proposal caused.
As seen in the previous subparts, deprivation of citizenship has come back as a research interest for scholars in the recent years. However, a more precise discussion of ‘the politics of citizenship’ has failed to emerge from the literature. Indeed, no study analyzing precisely why states deprive and who deprives on the political spectrum can be found.
This thesis aims to contribute to filling the gap in this literature with an analysis of the parliamentary debates that took place in France and the UK.
Chapter 2: Research design
This research design explains how I answer the research question: how have parliamentary debates around deprivation of citizenship in the UK and France differed and how do these differences relate to different policy outcomes?
This chapter first contains an explanation of the general research design, before introducing the concept of critical frame analysis. Another subpart explains how data was gathered, before the researcher’s positionality is discussed. Finally, some expectations are laid out.
2.1. General research design
The research design for my research is a comparative case study.
First of all, a comparative case study allows to look at both countries, compare and analyze them. The reason as to why I chose France and the UK as subjects of my comparison
is based on the fact that France and the UK are countries with many similarities: both liberal democracies, until recently both members of the EU, comparably wealthy, both signatories to conventions aimed at preventing statelessness, both states with a colonial past and both having experienced terrorist attacks in recent years. Yet, when it comes to deprivation of citizenship, their current legislation is quite different.
To try and understand this difference I have chosen to look at the parliamentary debates that both states had regarding deprivation of citizenship. The reason for this is that parliamentary debates are key to adopting new legislation: in France the legislation was not adopted and so never made it out of Parliament. Additionally, parliamentary debates are a good place to find which discourse and concepts politicians use to speak about deprivation of citizenship and whether the debate was extended to more than just deprivation of citizenship.
2.2. Critical frame analysis
Looking at the parliamentary debates in both France and the UK, this thesis aims to uncover how deprivation of citizenship was presented and discussed by members of Parliament and how deprivation of citizenship was indeed framed.
Critical frame analysis as constructed by Lombardo and Verloo draws from notions ‘developed by social movement theory, public policy and gender theory’ (Lombardo and Verloo, 2007,
p.32). The idea of frame draws from the work of Goffman and is described as ‘an interpretation scheme that structures the meaning of reality’ (Goffmann, 1974 in Lombardo and Verloo, 2007, p.32). The most important concept within this methodology is that of policy frames, which ‘originate in discursive consciousness, to the extent that actors using them can explain discursively why they are using them and what they mean to them, but they also originate in the practical consciousness, to the extent that they originate in routines and rules that commonly are applied in certain contexts without an awareness that these are indeed rules or routines, and that they could have been different’ (Lombardo and Verloo, 2007, p.32).
Critical frame analysis was designed with the intention in mind to serve feminist and intersectional research and more specifically to analyze gender (in)equality, such as the two projects in which Verloo participated and which served to draw up the methodology: the MAGEEQ project which conducted comparative research on the framing of gender inequality in certain European countries, and the QUING project, a comparative research on gender equality in Europe (Lombardo & Verloo, 2007).2
Although the research conducted with this thesis is not conducted from a feminist or intersectional standpoint, the methodology of critical frame analysis with its sensitizing questions was useful to answer the research question: namely to find out in which ways the debates in the UK and France have differed and how these differences relate to different policy outcomes.
Critical frame analysis is based on sensitizing questions that aim to make explicit the diagnosis, prognosis and call for action when constructing frames. The dimension of voice is also important and asks ultimately who has a voice in adopting certain policies.
In this thesis, particular attention was paid to what was represented as the problem in the diagnosis: what was the new deprivation of citizenship legislation meant to solve? Moreover, the target groups were also of great importance: who was the person affected by the deprivation of citizenship legislation and how was that person described?
The question of voice was particularly important in the context of parliamentary debates: I focused on whether the person speaking was a Minister or another representant of the
2The QUING project: can be found here:
https://www.iwm.at/projects/quing/www.quing.eu/component/option%2ccom_frontpage/Itemid%2c1/index.html
Government or an MP representing a political party in Parliament and which party the person was representing on the political spectrum (focusing on a left/right divide).
Finally, concerning the call for action, the focus was on whether there was a call merely to vote for or against the deprivation of citizenship legislation proposed or whether a call extended to changes going beyond the deprivation of citizenship debate.
I used Atlas Ti for coding, and started by reading the parliamentary debates and coding them intuitively, in a such a way that would indicate what was happening in the debate, while keeping the list of sensitizing questions at hand. The next step was to group the codes into bigger similar groups as some codes stood for quotes related to the same issue or that had a similar meaning. The final step was to use the codes to answer the sensitizing questions so as to construct the frames. Using this method for the French and British debates allowed me to recognize similar frames but also where the debate differed.
2.3. Data gathering
2.3.1. Criteria for data gathering
I chose to include only debates where the Immigration Act 2014 and the Loi de protection de
la Nation were specifically debated, and more precisely where the deprivation of citizenship
clause was debated: I dismissed other debates where deprivation of citizenship was referred to briefly by one of more MPs as less relevant because deprivation of citizenship was more often in that case used to serve another point in their argument and not discussed in itself.
I chose to not include the debates that took place in the parliamentary committees, for the reason firstly that members of the committee were also members of Parliament and as such the amendments proposed by the committee and the debates that took place in committee would be explained during the plenary debate, and secondly because of the fact that committees contain a smaller number of members: a plenary debate in which every MP could hypothetically join provided a more interesting and diverse group to analyze.
2.3.2. British data
The British documents analyzed and used for coding for the critical frame analysis in this thesis were transcripts of the plenary parliamentary debates that took place between the 30th of January
2014 and the 14th of May 2014. Although Immigration Act 2014 was first discussed in
Parliament on the 10th of October 2013, with its first reading in the House of Commons (HC),
the clause on deprivation of citizenship was only added to the bill by the government on the 30th of January 2013. The bill was given royal assent on the 14th of May 2014 and the legislation took effect from that date on.
The transcripts were available on the website of the British Parliament, where the stages of the bill leading to its adoption were made clear (UK Parliament, 2014).
I proceeded to go through every transcript of the debates from the 30th of January onwards, searching for the parliamentary sessions in which they discussed deprivation of citizenship specifically. This was done for example by using the search function of my browser and looking for key words such as ‘deprivation’, ‘citizenship’ and the number of the clause discussed. Although some of the debates analyzed in the House of Lords (HL) were listed as committee debates, they were actually the full house sitting as a committee to discuss the bill, which made them relevant for my analysis3.
Following the criteria discussed in the section above, 3 parliamentary debates were selected in the HC and 6 were selected in the HL (see Annex 1).
2.3.3. French data
As for French data, documents analyzed and used for coding for the critical frame analysis in this thesis were transcripts of the plenary parliamentary debates that took place between the 16th of November 2015, when President Hollande addressed the Congrès and the 22nd of March 2016, the last time the constitutional amendment was subject to debate before being withdrawn. The transcripts of the debates were available separately on the website of the Assemblée Nationale (AN) and on the website of the Sénat (Assemblée Nationale, 2016; Sénat, 2015-2016).
To find which parliamentary debates contained discussions about the constitutional revision and more precisely on article 2 about deprivation of citizenship, I looked at the schedule of the Sénat for example and within the transcripts, used the search function of my browser with keywords such as ‘déchéance’, ‘nationalité’ and ‘révision constitutionnelle’.
3 ‘A Committee of the whole House is sometimes used instead of a Public Bill Committee for some or all of a
Bill's committee stage in the Commons. It takes place in the main chamber and allows all MPs to take part in the debate and to vote on the Bill's contents’, retrieved from
Using the criteria discussed in above, 4 parliamentary debates were selected in the AN and 3 were selected in the Sénat (see Annex 2).
2.4. Positionality
As a researcher, I am aware that my identity can impact the research I conduct. Indeed, I am a dual citizen, born Brazilian and naturalized French. That is part of my motivation for choosing this topic: deprivation of citizenship is something that could possibly be applied to me, both as a dual citizen and as a naturalized citizen. It also means that I am a national of one of the states whose parliamentary debates I analyze: I started this research with some ideas about France and some of its politicians and political parties that contributed to the parliamentary debates. I came to this thesis with certain ideas about deprivation of citizenship also. Indeed, I agreed with scholars who doubt the efficacy of such a measure and find the possibility of losing citizenship as weakening the ‘right to have rights’. Furthermore, the fact that these measures are in most cases only applied to naturalized citizens or dual nationals seems stigmatizing, it is saying to these persons that they do not really belong: because they are immigrants or have a parent who is an immigrant they are not citizens in the same way that mono-citizens born in the state are, their allegiance might lie with the other state. However, I did not know much about the specifics of deprivation of citizenship laws before writing this thesis: my main sources were newspapers articles commenting on the parliamentary debates and the somewhat sensationalizing headlines about Christiane Taubira leaving the government. My motivation was also to try and understand better what the debate that happened in France actually was, and whether the controversy around the topic was justified.
However, I tried to navigate my positionality in a way that would avoid bias in my research. To do so, I decided to try to understand the difference between the UK and France: comparing these two countries allowed for some necessary distance to the topic that would have been harder to gain had I only studied the French case.
Moreover, using critical frame analysis was a way to understand what all parties to the debates were saying: to view with criticism not only the frames used to defend deprivation of citizenship legislation but also to oppose it. This made possible a critic look at the argument in favour of deprivation of citizenship.
2.5. Limitations of the research design
First of all, although using critical frame analysis seems appropriate to analyze the parliamentary debates that happened in France and the UK and compare them, the comparison is less than perfect because of the differences in the context in which the debates happened. Indeed, in France the debate and the proposition of the constitutional revision happened only a few days after a terrorist attack that left the country in shock. On the contrary, in the UK the bill was not adopted after a terrorist attack or a shocking moment for the nation and was included in an ordinary bill. This difference is not negligible for my analysis and I acknowledge that this context played an important part in the outcome of the debates.
The differences also extended to the different rules of adopting the legislation in the two countries: an ordinary legislation in the UK and a constitutional revision that required a 3/5th majority in both the AN and the Sénat in France.
Moreover, a limitation to this research design is that fact that in both states deprivation of citizenship was not debated on its own but part of a wider legislation: although for the purpose of this thesis and the coherence of the topic I only focused on the specific articles concerning deprivation of citizenship, further insight could have been gained by also considering the legislation as a whole. It is particularly the case for the French debates, as deprivation of citizenship was only one of two articles contained in the proposal for constitutional revision, and the debate sometimes overlapped from one article to the other.
Finally, I chose not to include the debates that happened in parliamentary commissions: as representants of these commissions are present in the plenary debates of Parliament and the texts proposed by the commissions are also debated in the plenary debates it did not seem necessary to analyze them.
The use of critical frame analysis in this thesis meant that the limitations that applied more generally to critical frame analysis also impacted this research. For example, although critical frame analysis is helpful to map the discourse and frames used, ‘it is not equally useful for understanding why the existing frames have emerged in the form in which they appear to the researcher’ (Lombardo & Verloo, 2007, p.40). To balance the impact of this limitation of the research design I included in chapter 3 an explanation of the context in which the parliamentary debates took place and a new policy was implemented (or not).
Another limitation of critical frame analysis is ‘the influence of subjective interpretation and coding on the obtained data and how this could affect the reliability of comparative results’
(idem). In the QUING and MAGEEQ projects, Verloo was working with a team of researchers and the coding could easily be corrected using a second pair of eyes, or more. However, since I was conducting research for this thesis alone, this was not a possibility for me. To balance this limitation of the design I carefully went through my codes and my use of these to answer the sensitizing questions.
2.6. Expectations
My expectations for the results of the analysis are mainly anchored in themes and findings in the literature on deprivation of citizenship.
First of all, I expect that the frames used during the parliamentary debates will have some similarities to arguments discussed by scholars concerning deprivation of citizenship: I expect that concepts such as statelessness and inequality will be important in the debate.
I also expect, based on the findings of Mills and Fargues discussed above that deprivation of citizenship will be controversial because of MPs having to choose who will be the target of these deprivation measures (Mills, 2016; Fargues, 2017).
Chapter 3: The context of the parliamentary debates
This chapter contains a description of the key differences between the French and British parliamentary systems and then goes on to discuss the different political contexts involved when the new deprivation of citizenship legislations were proposed. After that, a subpart examines the prior legislation, the international conventions and the proposed new legislations. Finally, this chapter ends with a summary of the parliamentary debates.
3.1. Differences and similarities of the French and British parliamentary systems
First of all, both states have a bicameral parliamentary system. The British Parliament is composed of a lower house, the House of Commons (HC) and of an upper house, the House of Lords (HL). The lower house is directly elected by citizens, whereas the House of Lords is made of some hereditary members and appointed members.
The French Parliament has a similar composition: the lower house is the Assemblée Nationale, whose members are directly elected by citizens. The upper house is the Sénat: its members are indirectly elected, meaning in this case that they are elected by an electoral college made of other elected officials.
Both chambers have the power to propose legislation, and legislation is debated in both chambers. However, in the two cases, if an agreement cannot be reached between the lower and upper house, the lower house has the last word, as this chamber, being directly elected, is considered as the most democratic. This is the scenario that took place with the deprivation of citizenship debate in the UK for example: the Government proposed the deprivation of citizenship clause in Immigration Act 2014, the clause was debated in the HC and then in the HL. The HL’s final amendment was a petition for a joint committee to debate this clause further. However, in the HC this was not judged necessary and the clause was adopted and included in the Act.
But, if the adoption of ordinary law is very similar in the two states, the procedure for a constitutional revision is not. The UK does not have a written constitution like France, relying on tradition instead to divide the power between the executive, legislative and judiciary branches. In France, the powers are divided in the Constitution, which also sets rules for its legislature and presidential elections. The current Constitution was adopted in 1958 at the initiative of President Charles de Gaulle and his then Minister of Justice (garde des Sceaux)
Michel Debré. The French Constitution sets in article 89 the rules for constitutional revision (French Constitution, 1958, art. 89). The choice that President Hollande made in 2015 was to convoke the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat as a Congrès: by doing so he decided to submit the proposition for a constitutional revision to the two chambers of Parliament. Said proposal, following the rules laid down by article 89 can only be adopted if an identical text is voted in both chambers with a majority of the 3/5th. A constitutional revision is interestingly the only case provided by the French constitution where both chambers have equal power.
The proposed constitutional revision did not succeed in 2016: the two chambers could not agree on an identical text and President Hollande decided to withdraw the controversial proposal.
3.2. The different political contexts
One of the major differences in the context of parliamentary debates on deprivation of citizenship in France and the UK is the political party that was in office at the time. For the UK, during the 2013-2014 period that Immigration Act 2014 was debated, Prime Minister David Cameron was in office, following the 2010 elections that had given majority to the Conservative party in Parliament. On the other hand, in France in the 2015-2016 period President François Hollande, from the Parti Socialiste, was in office after his election in 2012.
We can see that different political contexts were at hand when deprivation of citizenship was debated in both countries, with a right political party at the head of the UK and a left political party at the head of France.
Furthermore, a major difference in the political contexts during the debates is the fact that the French proposal for constitutional revision which contained an article on deprivation of citizenship followed the November 2015 terrorist attacks. The attacks took place on the 13th November, outside the Stade de France during a football match, but also at cafés and restaurants and at the Bataclan, during a concert. Amongst the victims of the attack, 130 were killed, and more than 400 hundred were injured, making it one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in France (Harley, Malnick, Mulholland, Sabur, Steafel & Trotman, 2015). The proposal for constitutional revision was first announced on the 16th November 2015, just a few days after the attacks, in a televised speech that President Hollande gave in front of the Congrès. In this sense, the proposal for constitutional revision, and with it deprivation of citizenship, was a direct answer to these attacks.
As such, in France the proposal and the following parliamentary debates were followed closely by the media and the population: the constitutional revision had political momentum and high stakes. On the contrary, as no particular recent event had led to the proposal of Immigration Act 2014 or the deprivation clause more specifically in the UK, it was not as mediatized as in France: deprivation of citizenship was passed as just another legislation.
This notable difference carries its weight into the parliamentary debates and the policy outcomes.
3.3. Legislation on deprivation of citizenship in the UK and in France
3.3.1. Legislation on deprivation of citizenship prior to the proposals debated
Prior to Immigration Act 2014, the UK already changed its legislation on deprivation of citizenship in 2002 and in 2006. According to Mantu, ‘the overhaul of the British rules on nationality started with the adoption of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (…) which made deprivation applicable also to British citizens by birth’ (2014, p.164). This application to citizens by birth was however limited by the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of statelessness (discussed further below), which meant that in practice this only applied to dual nationals. In 2006, ‘citizenship deprivation powers were further expanded with the adoption of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006’ , with which the Home Secretary now could deprive someone of citizenship if he was satisfied ‘that such deprivation of citizenship is “conducive to the public good”’ (idem, p.166). However, the statelessness prohibition was maintained. As a result of these changes, before the adoption of the Immigration Act 2014, the UK could already deprive dual citizens and naturalized citizens of citizenship for acts of terrorism, but could not make them stateless.
In France, prior to the proposal for constitutional revision in 2015, deprivation of citizenship in cases of terrorism was also possible. Article 25 of the Code Civil provides that deprivation of citizenship is possible only if it does not result in statelessness, and clearly states ‘a crime or délit constituting an act of terrorism’4 as one of the cases in which deprivation can be applied.
This deprivation can only be applied to ‘the individual who has acquired the quality of French’,
meaning a naturalized French citizen and is restricted by a time limit: the act of terrorism has to have happened at the latest 10 years after the person was naturalized (Code Civil, art. 25-1). Before the proposal of the constitutional revision, deprivation of citizenship for committing terrorism was only possible for naturalized citizens who had been naturalized fairly recently. Thus, the main difference in the previous legislations was that the UK already could deprive dual citizens of citizenship, whereas in France only naturalized citizens could be deprived.
3.3.2. International conventions
The 1961 Convention on the prevention of statelessness is a UN text that was adopted following the Second World War and the high number of individuals made stateless during that time (UN, 1961). The writings of Hannah Arendt in the origins of totalitarianism about the ‘right to have rights’ are considered as having contributed to the writing of the international treaty (Arendt, 1948).
Both the UK and France have signed the Convention, but France has not ratified it. Without ratifying an international convention in the state’s Parliament, the convention is not binding: this means that at the time of the debates on deprivation of citizenship, France was not obliged under the 1961 UN Convention to not render individuals stateless.
But, even for states like the UK that have signed the Convention, there is a possibility to emit reservations on certain clauses of the international treaty. Indeed, the Convention was drafted with the idea that it had ‘to balance the rights of individuals with the interests of States by setting out general rules for the prevention of statelessness, and simultaneously allowing some exceptions to those rules’ as can be found in its introductory note (UN, 1961).
In the case of the UK, when the state signed the treaty it retained ‘the right to deprive a naturalized person of his nationality’ on two grounds: the first one is if the person ‘has, in disregard of an express prohibition of Her Britannic Majesty, rendered or continued to render services to, or received or continued to receive emoluments from, another State’ and the second is if a person ‘has conducted himself in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of Her Britannic Majesty’ (UN, 2020). The second case comprises acts of terrorism, for which deprivation is possible even if it leads to statelessness under Immigration Act 2014.
In addition to the 1961 UN Convention, there also exists the 1997 European Convention on Nationality, which contains in its article 4 the principle that statelessness should be prevented (EU, 1997).
However, the UK has neither signed or ratified the convention and France has signed but not ratified the convention. This seems to show that both states refuse to be further bound under international law to prevent statelessness.
3.3.3. The proposed legislation
In the UK, the legislation proposed by the Government to the HC contained in its original version that the Secretary of State could deprive a naturalized citizen if the Secretary was ‘satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom’ (Proposed version 3: Immigration Act 2014, clause 60). The final version of the bill added more conditions to the power of deprivation: the Secretary needs to have ‘reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory’ (UK Immigration Act, 2014, clause 66).
In France, the proposed constitutional revision aimed at modifying article 34 of the Constitution, to add that a law could regulate ‘the conditions in which a person born French who has another nationality can be deprived of French nationality when she is sentenced for a crime constituting a grave infringement to the life of the Nation’ (Projet de loi constitutionnelle de protection de la Nation (original proposal), 2015). The French original proposal had for aim to extend deprivation of citizenship to dual nationals, which would not create stateless individuals.
3.4. A summary of the debates
The British debates started with the surprise addition of a clause on deprivation of citizenship on 30th January 2014, although the bill had already been discussed in the HC since October 2013. Theresa May, then the Home Secretary, presented the clause in Parliament. Discussion on the clause ensued the same day in the HC. This addition at the last minute meant that there was little time for MPs in the HC to discuss the clause, since the bill was already at its third reading in the HC. This untimely addition was a point that MPs referred to many times and blamed the Government for.
This also had for consequence that deprivation of citizenship was much further discussed in the HL, since the Lords were aware of the deprivation of citizenship clause since the first reading of the bill in the upper house.
The debate in both chambers was characterized by a discussion on statelessness and the consequences of deprivation on the individuals, particularly when the deprivation was conducted abroad. The support for the bill was present from MPs supporting the Conservative majority and MPs of the opposition, in particular Labour MPs, were mostly against the deprivation clause. In the HL particularly, the bill failed to convince, which lead to an amendment for further discussion of the clause by a joint committee of both houses. However, the amendment did not encounter support in the HC and was rejected. Since the HC, as the democratically elected chamber, has the last word in situations where the two chambers cannot agree, the deprivation of citizenship clause was adopted.
On the other hand, deprivation of citizenship was no surprise in the French parliamentary debates. Indeed, since the proposal for a constitutional revision was announced by President Hollande on 16th November 2015 in front of the Congrès, MPs knew that deprivation of citizenship would be part of the government’s proposed constitutional revision. The proposal only contained two articles: article 1 aimed at adding to the constitution the state of emergency and article 2 aimed at adding deprivation of citizenship to the constitution. Manuel Valls, the Prime Minister, was a key presence in French parliament during the debates of the constitutional revision and defended the revision in both chambers. The debate started first in the lower house, the Assemblée Nationale and was almost immediately characterized by a split in the majority when it came to deprivation: MPs thought that the idea did not align with the values that the
Parti Socialiste and more generally the left upheld. Moreover, the debate focused largely on
dual citizens and the possible inequalities that would be created by only being able to deprive dual citizens. The text was considered stigmatizing by many. Deprivation of citizenship also struggled to convince a certain part of the opposition in the chamber: the text did end up obtaining the required 3/5th majority, due to the fact that certain MPs from the left and certain MPs from the right voted in favour of it. However, the version adopted by the Assemblée Nation no longer contained a reference to dual citizens.
In the Sénat, the debates were more centered on the refusal of statelessness, which would be a consequence if deprivation of citizenship no longer applied to just dual citizens but also to mono-citizens. As a result, a different text than that which was adopted in the AN obtained the required majority in the Sénat.
On 30th March 2016, President Hollande announced the withdrawal of the constitutional
revision, resulting in the failure of the new deprivation of citizenship policy to be implemented.
The debates in France were also characterized by the departure of the Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira from the Government, in February 2016. Her departure was linked to the deprivation of citizenship article in the constitutional revision, which she vividly opposed. Her departure was mediatized and she later commented on it in a book she released in the same year. This departure was another example of the divide in the French left over deprivation of citizenship.
This chapter gives us some insight into key differences in the context in which deprivation of citizenship was debated in France and the UK. Interesting points are the fact that in France deprivation was discussed as part of a constitutional revision whereas it was an ordinary legislation that was passed in the UK, and that the French proposal was in response to terrorist attacks. Moreover, this chapter also reflects on the fact that the two countries already had different legislations on deprivation of citizenship: in the UK it was possible to deprive dual nationals, meaning here persons born with British nationality, whereas in France only the recently naturalized could be deprived prior to the most recent debates. Additionally, that the proposed texts were also very different: in the UK the aim was to make it easier to deprive even when individuals would be made stateless, and in France the original idea was to deprive without creating statelessness. This context is useful in understanding the results of the critical frame analysis.
Chapter 4: Critical frame analysis
4.1. Defending deprivation : national security and national unity
First of all, the main frames used in both the British and the French debate are oppositional frames: one defending the deprivation of citizenship legislation proposed and the other opposing it.
When it comes to defending it, the representants of the Government in both countries use some of the same arguments, mainly arguing that deprivation of citizenship is a good thing and needed for the state. In the UK, deprivation of citizenship is argued in view of the goal of deporting the person in question. When Theresa May comes to present the new clause in the House of Commons (HC), she states clearly that:
‘The whole point of the measure is to be able to remove certain people from the United Kingdom, which we are currently unable to do.’ (30.01 HC, Column 1043)
In France however, deprivation is argued in a constitutional revision of which the main goal is to fight against terrorism (Loi de protection de la Nation) and whose first article is on the state of emergency, which gives the executive considerable power when dealing with terrorists and speeds up the process in which police can deal with persons suspected of terrorism. That is to say that deprivation is argued less on the basis that it will be an effective measure in the fight against terrorism, but more on the fact that it will be an effective symbol for the Nation. The Prime Minister Manuel Valls does not hesitate to proclaim it as such:
‘Il s’agit bien d’un acte symbolique, mais qui a aussi son efficacité. Parce que nous sommes Français, nous connaissons la force des symboles !’ (It is a symbolic act, but that also has its
efficacy. Because we are French, we know the strength of symbols!) (16.03, Sénat)5
Although the goals of the measures proposed differ, a similar frame is used by both Governments: they are the ‘defenders of the state’ in the face of terrorism.
5 The transcripts of the French parliamentary debates do not contain a system of Columns like in the UK that
could make it easier to refer to a quote, for that reason the citation of the French quotes in this thesis is less precise.
In the UK the idea used is more that of ‘national security’, namely the Government asking ‘let us protect the Nation… by passing this law’. As the Minister James Brokenshire proclaims when defending the clause in the HC:
‘We judge that the proposed provision is an appropriate mechanism for guarding our national security.’ (James Brokenshire, 7.05 HC, Column 192).
In France, national security goes one step further and justifies a call for ‘national unity’. It is indeed one of the main arguments used by Prime Minister Manuel Valls in front of both chambers of the French Parliament: he regularly calls for the MPs to vote the constitutional revision as a symbol of national unity in the face of the terrorist attacks:
‘ Face à cela, les Français nous réclament de tout faire pour les protéger. Ils nous demandent l’unité, une unité sans faille.’ (Confronted with this, French persons require that we do
everything to protect them. They ask of us unity, unity without fault.) (05.02, AN)
In France, this national unity is used as a rallying cry all throughout the debate in both chambers and expressed with emotion: ‘a unity without fault’.
The vocabulary used is patriotic, highly symbolic and appeals to a sense of duty to the French people and the French Nation more specifically: it is that of a country at war. The war against the Islamic state and the victims of the terrorist attacks are mentioned all throughout the debates: the representants of the government expect MPs to rally under this attack.
It is such that Manuel Valls does not hesitate to remind the Senate when the chamber starts to deliberate after the AN has already done so, that in the other chamber a compromise was reached with the new redaction of article 2 and that they should rally to that in the name of national unity:
‘C’est au nom d’une certaine idée de la Nation que le Gouvernement a abouti à la rédaction de l’article 2. Je ne peux donc imaginer que la majorité sénatoriale ne soit pas au rendez-vous.’ (It is in the name of a certain idea of the Nation that the Government has ended up with
the redaction of article 2. I cannot imagine that the senatorial majority will not join.) (16.03, Sénat).
But, Manuel Valls does not only seek to unify under the idea of national unity: he also appeals to a sense of loyalty to the French President. The executive in France is shared by the President and the Prime Minister, the President is directly elected by citizens and is the holder of most executive powers (French Constitution, 1958, art. 5 & 6). He chooses the Prime Minister and has most of the executive powers (French Constitution, 1958, art. 8).
Manuel Valls refers to the speech of the President in front the Congrès, a rare moment in a presidency, as the ‘serment de Versailles’ (the oath of Versailles). By doing so, he conjures the symbolic power of the President speaking to both chambers of Parliament, but also to the French people, only a few days after the terrorist attacks. The Prime Minister for example states that:
‘En cherchant le rassemblement et l’unité, le Président adressait un message aussi bien au Parlement qu’à la Nation tout entière. Il était alors pleinement dans son rôle de chef de
l’État.’ (By searching to bring together and unify, the President gave a message to the
Parliament as well as to the entire Nation. He was then fully in his role as chief of State.) (09.02, AN).
This speech was considered to be a successful response from the President, and MPs rose to applaud it in the Congrès. The Prime Minister seeks to incite unity by referring to the powerful moment that was the speech and by using the symbol of the President, who as chief of the army amongst other functions, is meant to unify the Nation in the face of war.
The use of the ‘national unity’ frame in France is in this way a marker of the specificity of the French semi-presidential system.
These two frames used by the Government and MPs in favour of deprivation of citizenship in both countries are quite similar: they are used to pose themselves as the defenders of the Nation and to rally the MPs in the face of the danger that is terrorism.
However, the opposition and even the majority in Parliament do not always buy into this claim.
4.2. Against deprivation: arbitrariness and values of the left
Responding to the Governments’ position on deprivation of citizenship, oppositional frames are used by the opposition in the UK and the majority in Parliament in France.
In the case of the UK, the MPs against deprivation are mostly those of the opposition: voices speaking out come mainly from the Labour party and the Liberal democrats. They frame themselves as ‘defenders of civil liberties’. Indeed, the government here is accused of arbitrariness in the measure proposed.
The first argument used by the opposition is that there is not enough time to discuss the measure: in the HC the clause was only added tardively in the bill stage: on the 30th January 2014, when the bill had been discussed since the 10th October 2013. MPs in the HC feel that it impeded on the quality of the law, which the HL reciprocates, although the debate was able to go on for longer in the HL. Baroness Smith of Basildon, affiliated with the Labour party, recognized that:
‘There is a sharp contrast with the time which was allowed to debate this issue in the other
place.’ (7.04.14 HL, Column 1186).
Unexpectedly here I found an argument in favour of bicameralism: the law was able to be further discussed in the UK because there was a second chamber.
But the opposition mainly frames the Government and the clause as arbitrary by accusing it of secrecy: they advance individuals deprived of British citizenship as victims of a secret court (the Special Immigration Appeals Commission) which does not readily divulge its material, but also victims of a Government that deprives them abroad, which makes it difficult to answer and appeal the deprivation of citizenship they receive in another state. For example, MP Fiona Mactaggart intervenes:
‘I said in the debate about the formation of SIAC that transparency is the most effective
protection against terrorism. I am really concerned that this arrangement not only risks creating statelessness but depends on a grossly untransparent system.’ (7.05.14 HC, Column
210).
This shows a classic tension between counterterrorist measures and civil liberties, and presents opposition MPs as distrustful of the Conservative government, even when it comes to terrorism measures. In France, for example, this tension is also seen when discussing article 1 of the constitutional revision, which concerns the state of emergency.
