Deportation has again taken a prominent place within the immigration policies of nation-states. Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation addresses the social responses to deportation, in particular the growing movements against deportation and detention, and for freedom of movement and the regularization of status. The book brings deportation and anti-deportation together with the aim of understanding the political subjects that emerge in this contested field of governance and control, freedom and struggle. However, rather than focusing on the typical subjects of removal – refugees, the undocumented, and irregular migrants – Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation looks at the ways that citizens get caught up in the deportation apparatus and must struggle to remain in or return to their country of citizenship. The transformation of ‘regular’ citizens into deportable ‘irregular’ citizens involves the removal of the rights, duties, and obligations of citizenship. This includes unmaking citizenship through official revocation or denationalization, as well as through informal, extra-legal, and unofficial means. The book features stories about struggles over removal and return, deportation and repatriation, rescue and abandonment. The book features eleven ‘acts of citizenship’ that occur in the context of deportation and anti-deportation, arguing that these struggles for rights, recognition, and return are fundamentally struggles over political subjectivity – of citizenship. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of citizenship, migration and security studies.

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either. This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

Eminent political theorist Joseph Carens tests the limits of democratic theory in the realm of immigration, arguing that any acceptable immigration policy must be based on moral principles even if it conflicts with the will of the majority.

This thorough analysis of immigration governance in Spain explores the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion at play at one of Europe’s southern borders. David Moffette analyzes Spain’s processes of immigration governance and reveals the complicated series of legal obstacles facing many migrants. Differential access to border mobility is a central concern of contemporary politics, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the European Union, where external borders have been strengthened to prevent irregular entry and internal borders have been removed to promote free circulation. Moffette draws on interviews with policymakers and on more than three decades of parliamentary debates, laws, and policy documents to show that culture, labour, and security issues intersect to create a regime of migration governance that is at once progressive and repressive. A detailed empirical analysis of Spanish immigration policy, this book provides a thought-provoking and insightful contribution to debates in socio-legal, border, and citizenship studies.

A proposal that immigrants in the United States should be offered a path to legalized status.