ABSTRACT
The issues with which this book has dealt are both immensely complex and immensely important. Entitlement to citizenship carries with it a host of specific rights and responsibilities: rights to residence, assorted benefits, political representation and participation and, often, associated obligations to the wider community (as for example in military service). Citizenship has wider, affective connotations too: the sense of belonging to a broader community, expressed in symbols and values, and the often quite vehement emotional identification which may be associated with that wider community of belonging. Conversely, exclusion from citizenship may be associated with experiences ranging from the relatively passive lack of entitlement to vote (which cynics might dismiss as the figleaf of representative democracy in any event) through infinitely more problematic and unpleasant aspects of life as ‘aliens’ in a not always hospitable host country.
