Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Long term resident migrants to the UK, who often possess valuable skills for the economy, still face significant barriers to citizenship. In this important book, Dr Prabhat captures the experiences of those who successfully become British citizens through stories of belonging, citizenship and the law; beautifully illustrated by artist Sam Church. Speaking to contemporary times of Brexit, the book exposes the challenges which become insurmountable for many migrants, and illuminates the gap between policy and practice in gaining British citizenship.

A study of the conditions of being a citizen, belonging and democracy in suburban Britain, this book focuses on understanding how a community takes on the social responsibility and pressures of being a good citizen through what they call ‘stupid’ events, festivals and parades. Building a community is perceived to be an important and necessary act to enable resilience against the perceived threats of neoliberal socio-economic life such as isolation, selfishness and loss of community. Citizenship, Democracy and Belonging in Suburban Britain explores how authoritative knowledge is developed, maintained and deployed by this group as they encounter other ‘social projects’, such as the local council planning committee or academic projects researching participation in urban planning. The activists, who call themselves the ‘Seething Villagers’, model their community activity on the mythical ancient village of Seething where moral tales of how to work together, love others and be a community are laid out in the Seething Tales. These tales include Seething ‘facts’ such as the fact that the ancient Mountain of Seething was destroyed by a giant. The assertion of fact is central to the mechanisms of play and the refusal of expertise at the heart of the Seething community. The book also stands as a reflexive critique on anthropological practice, as the author examines their role in mobilising knowledge and speaking on behalf of others. Citizenship, Democracy and Belonging in Suburban Britain is of interest to anthropologists, urban studies scholars, geographers and those interested in the notions of democracy, inclusion, citizenship and anthropological practice.

James Hampshire explores the politics of immigration in postwar Britain and shows how ideas of race, demography and belonging intertwined to shape immigration policy. It is the first book to explain immigration in terms of the politics of demographic governance - how states manage and regulate their populations - and provides a much needed historical context to current debates. In addition, the book develops new perspectives on the ways in which racialized ideas influenced politics and policy-making.

In Projecting Citizenship, Gabrielle Moser gives a comprehensive account of an unusual project produced by the British government’s Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee at the beginning of the twentieth century—a series of lantern slide lectures that combined geography education and photography to teach schoolchildren around the world what it meant to look and to feel like an imperial citizen. Through detailed archival research and close readings, Moser elucidates the impact of this vast collection of photographs documenting the land and peoples of the British Empire, circulated between 1902 and 1945 in classrooms from Canada to Hong Kong, from the West Indies to Australia. Moser argues that these photographs played a central role in the invention and representation of imperial citizenship. She shows how citizenship became a photographable and teachable subject by tracing the intended readings of the images that the committee hoped to impart to viewers and analyzing how spectators may have used their encounters with these photographs for protest and resistance. Interweaving political and economic history, history of pedagogy, and theories of citizenship with a consideration of the aesthetic and affective dimensions of viewing the lectures, Projecting Citizenship offers important insights into the social inequalities and visual language of colonial rule.

Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.

This is the first book-length study of the ideological foundations of British imperialism in the twentieth century. Drawing on the thinking of imperial activists, publicists, ideologues, and travelers such as Lionel Curtis, John Buchan, Arnold White, Richard Jebb and Thomas Sedgwick, this book offers a comparative history of how the idea of imperial citizenship took hold in early twentieth-century Britain, and how it helped foster the articulation of a broader British world. It reveals how imperial citizenship as a form of imperial identity was challenged by voices in both Britain and the empire, and how it influenced later imperial developments such as the immigration to Britain of ‘imperial citizens’ from the colonies after the Second World War. A work of political, intellectual and cultural history, the book re-incorporates the histories of the settlement colonies into imperial history, and suggests the importance of comparative history in understanding the imperial endeavour. It will be of interest to students of imperialism, British political and intellectual history, and of the various former dominions.

This innovative book considers the evolution of the contemporary issues surrounding British citizenship, integrating the social aspects and ideas of identity and belonging alongside the legal elements. With contributions from renowned lawyers and academics, it challenges the view that there are immutable values and enduring rights associated with citizenship status.