Denationalization, to deprive citizens of citizenship, is becoming an international trend – especially in order to fight terrorism. Public opinion is generally positive to these measures. However, few consider the consequences of denationalization. Only when investigating further it becomes clear that citizenship scholars are very concerned about this new trend pointing out that it easily becomes arbitrary, creates statelessness, threatens equality and how it is not an effective measure. This thesis investigates whether Members of Parliament in the UK address these concerns when extending denationalization powers, giving the Secretary of State the most extensive powers to denationalize among all liberal democracies.

The thesis entitled "Development of the Institution of State Citizenship in the Czech Republic and the Contemporary Situation" deals with the theoretical concept of the institute of citizenship, the content of the term, the historic origins of the archetype of modern citizenship in the ancient world and in the territory of the present Czech Republic, its stipulation in private law regulations, and its gradual transformation into a public institute. The thesis is a genesis of the constitutional and legal regulation in Czechoslovakia between 1918 to 1992, in the Czech Republic as the subject of the Czechoslovak Federation between 1969 and 1992, and in the autonomous Czech Republic from 1993 to the present. The thesis also refers to the international conventional regulation of the institute of citizenship, which is the expression of the sovereignty of a state, but multilateral international agreements between countries create a uniform platform of this institute, mainly within Europe. Court jurisdiction is also discussed, namely of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in relation to the content and interpretation of the institute of citizenship in the legislation of the Czech Republic.

The issue of political integration has been one of the most contentious subjects in terms of the academic studies concerning European integration. Despite many researches have been conducted in the areas concerning institutional problems, enlargement or European security, the researches concerning the socio-political diemnsion of the politcal integration are still very rare. This thesis approaches to the issue of political integration from a socio-political perspective.The problematic of the EU citizenship, its impacts upon the European political identity and possible measures to reconstruct the EU citizenship in accordance with the imperatives of postnational citizenship have been analyzed in a multidimensional framework.In that respect, it has been asserted that, if the EU citizenship could be restructured in accordance with a postnational understanding, it would provide an accurate measure to develop the feelings of Europeanness among the masses and thus,many initial tensions obscuring the political integration would be gradually resolved.

This thesis takes part in the discussion of the of citizenship and what it means to be a citizen within the social aspects. In 2002, The British Overseas Act conferred British citizenship to Montserratians and other British Overseas Territories Citizens. The scope of the study is to study formal and substantive citizenship for Montserratians as British citizens. The overarching research question is to what extent citizens of Montserrat enjoy formal and substantive citizenship as part of a British Overseas Territory. This is divided into following research questions: 1)     How do the Montserratians perceive the value of their British substantive citizenship and status as British Overseas Territory?2) What views are there on the partnership between the United Kingdom and Montserrat in relation to the British citizenship?  By using Reiter’s (2013) arguments of citizenship as a relational asset and citizenship as a social role, a case study with field studies and qualitative interviews were conducted in Montserrat to explore the issues of citizenship. Results show distinctions between formal access and perception of access to services such as passport, healthcare and education. The results also point to Montserratian not enjoying substantive British citizenship, with tensions in the political system and lack of representation.

This research investigates why people acquire dual citizenship. It focuses on the acquisition of dual citizenship through residency, with a processual lens and under conditions of “ordinariness” to tackle aspects that are usually overlooked. It builds on the differentiated access to dual citizenship granted to Peruvian migrants by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes. The 79 Peruvian migrants included in the study are either prospective dual citizens or actual dual citizens. The research builds on qualitative methods ranging from participant observation to in-depth semi-structured interviews. It investigates the motivations, expectations and contingences that bring migrants to the status acquisition. The analysis distinguishes between early and postponed acquisitions to highlight how practices of convenience and everyday forms of substantive commitment can coexist under the same national umbrella. Moreover it suggests that the availability and accessibility of the dual status cannot be conflated with a supposed desirability. Although nation-states design their citizenship and immigration regimes according to normative stances that should shape their ideal citizenry, individuals qua migrants manage to forge their own way into the host community while formally abiding the law. Thus, migrants’ pathways across statuses are the result of structural constraints as much as personal preferences and deliberate positioning vis-à-vis nation-states. The study shows how people navigate the laws through both legal and semi-legal means; how they cultivate constellations of belonging that do not necessarily match formal memberships; and how they invest citizenship with multiple meanings that can converge, collide, or simply bypass the state-led rhetoric on national membership.

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The model of the citizens' jury is used here to examine whether the promise that deliberative democracy can enable transformations of preference among citizens is valid. Supporters of the citizens' jury go so far as to claim that it can encourage the habit of active citizenship. Deliberation has become central to academic work on the future of democracy and much of this work alludes to a relationship between deliberation and learning. So far however, the learning processes that are seen as central to it have not been fully investigated. This thesis explores the impact of participation in a deliberative process by presenting a predominantly qualitative analysis ofthe way the citizens' jury experience changes participants' preferences. The changes experienced by the jurors are presented as a juror journey but not all jurors embark on this journey in the same way, nor do they all travel at the same pace. Some of those interviewed for this study claim that their journey only ended some time after the jury itself came to an end and for some it is clearly ongoing. Addressing the juror journey as a learning process highlights the changes in the discursive strategies employed by the jurors as they come to understand the ethical components of discourse. By dividing the process into its constituent parts of thinking, willing and judging the procedural requirements of deliberation are highlighted. The results of the fieldwork show that the majority of respondents in this study of former citizens' jurors develop a heightened sense of efficacy that enables them to assert a sense of themselves as citizens. Most describe a new awareness that their actions affect others on whose behalf they are deliberating. This now occurs for many of them alongside a new sense of trust in others to make decisions on their behalf. The research concludes that if practitioners of deliberation want to continue to make claims about transformation of preference they need to use the principles of discourse ethics to examine the legitimacy of deliberative forums that are in use and to make recommendations about how to improve their validity in the eyes of the public.

This ethnographic dissertation research project examines HIV prevention programs in Warsaw, Poland to explore the concurrent processes of democratization and privatization as Poland begins European Union accession. As inherently political public health interventions, HIV prevention programs provoke discussions of risk and responsibility, and visions of the moral social order. Therefore, they can be used to understand the ways in which politically and socially marginalized populations invoke claims to citizenship status through attention to health issues. From an epidemiological perspective, HIV/AIDS arrived in Poland relatively late (1985) and never reached the anticipated epidemic levels. In the 1980s, drawing attention to the potential threat of AIDS served as a forum through which the perceived failures of the socialist government could be publicly addressed. In the 1990s calls for improved access to AIDS information suggested that to be democratic meant to have open and easy access to scientific information, and debate surrounding the establishment of AIDS care facilities suggested that to be European was to be tolerant. However, issues of information and tolerance were problematic in reference to homosexuality. Prior to the advent of AIDS in Poland, socialist gender and sexual ideologies converged with Catholic notions of proper morality to marginalize and pathologize homosexuality. Nascent gay organizations saw the potential of HIV prevention as a way to justify the value of such organizations for the greater good of society. The possibility of controlling and participating in the task of HIV prevention presented an alternative to statesponsored surveillance under the guise of HIV prevention and encouraged public dialogue about the issues gays face in their daily lives. Whereas the national HIV prevention agenda focuses on risks as equally distributed across Polish society, a central component of the HIV prevention programs within Polish gay rights and drug abuse prevention organizations is harm reduction. As practiced by Polish gay organizations, a harm reduction philosophy draws attention to heterogeneity within gays and challenges the construction of them as a coherent risk group. These programs deemphasize sexuality in favor of a wider constellation of factors that contribute to finding oneself in situations that can lead to risky behavior.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of the impacts of political, social and economic dynamics of contemporary “free-market cities” on indigenous people that leave their traditional territories to settle on Latin American metropolises. The thesis examines the case of indigenous Shipibo migrants from the Amazon that have occupied in Lima, Peru a landfill site owned by the municipal government, and developed there a shantytown. The analyzes of the case sheds light on the innovative strategies that the Shipibo resort to in order to survive in the absence of formal jobs and social programs, and even despite recurrent threats to their social and cultural rights. Through the production of traditional handicraft, they collectively become ethnic entrepreneurs and enter the vast urban informal economy. Beside its interesting consequences for local politics and gender relations, this ethnic economic practice also becomes a way of group making and community building. After prolonged waits –during which the state appeared intermittently and with ambiguous messages–, the Shipibo finally face they most dreaded fear: eviction. Upon confronting this situation, and lacking the clientelistic networks in which Andean migrant peasants could count on in past decades, the Shipibo utilize a innovative repertoire of contained contention to appeal to the leftist municipal authority and thus articulate functional alliances with the goal of gaining land tenure. / text

The current research examines the relationship between the Israeli state and its migrant community in the United States. It argues that under conditions of accelerated globalization, the Israeli state has sought to reach out and re-territorialize its migrants' identities in order to strengthen their territory-based Israeli identity and, ultimately, return them to Israel. Focusing on the role played by cultural practices in the process of reterritorialization - which takes place in newly created extra-territorial spaces - it argues that a new type of transnational contract, namely diasporic citizenship has emerged that defines the relationship between the state and its citizens abroad. Cultural practices from above (state-produced) re-assert migrants' identities as national subjects and include them in the expanding incorporation regime of the Israeli state. At the same time, cultural practices from below (migrants'-produced) have been instrumental in their quest to (re)- imagine themselves as part of a trans-territorial Israeli nation. The research uses the Israel Independence Day Festival in Los Angeles to examine the extent to which it has become an extra-territorial space where state officials and migrants negotiate their often conflicting notions of Israeli culture, identity, and citizenship. It is this continuous process of negotiation, the research concludes that (re)-produces new types of affiliations between the state and its subjects overseas