ABSTRACT
IN THIS book I have sought to explain the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain which repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981 and maintained instead the various alternative types of citizenship. In order to do this, my research went beyond the twentieth century and concentrated on a global institution-first the British Empire and then the Commonwealth-in which Britain was the main political constituent. Existing works highlight domestic aspects and concerns in the development of Britain’s immigration and citizenship policies. They analyse the changes from the perspective of Britain’s constitutional system and the political manoeuvring that took place between political parties or between policy-makers and the public. This work has offered another perspective, giving an account of the variegated system within a global institution which maintained British subjecthood and later Commonwealth citizenship and enabled a national type of citizenship to emerge alongside them. Complex rules of citizenship and immigration were devised in response to the building and expanding of the British Empire and its transformation into the Commonwealth. Since it took a long time for the concept of national citizenship to insinuate itself into British popular consciousness, it was not until 1981 that British citizenship as a status was created. However, even that citizenship cannot strictly be termed a national type of citizenship and, consequently, the concept of Britishness remains controversial. This final section, after summarizing the arguments of the previous chapters, concludes by reflecting on the contemporary debate over the alternative types of citizenship and the future of national citizenship in Britain.
