Belonging on trial: how two democracies decide who counts as one of “Us”

A six-year-old boy born in Leeds sits stranded in Belgium, his passport revoked by the country of his birth, as reported by BBC in 2018. In a detention centre outside Toronto, a man spends his eleventh year behind bars not for any crime, but because no one can prove his identity (Human Rights Watch, 2021). And in a Syrian refugee camp, a young woman who grew up in East London, attended British schools, and spoke with a British accent, has been told she is no longer British (BBC News, 2019).

These are not aberrations, these are real life examples; see Kapoor N, Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism; Human Rights Watch, ‘I Didn’t Feel Like a Human in There’: Immigration Detention in Canada and its Impact on Mental Health (2021). They are the predictable consequences of legal systems built upon a question they have never honestly answered: what does it mean to belong?

We speak of citizenship as a fact, a status you either have or do not. But citizenship is not a fact. It is a story that states tell about who matters and who belongs. The stories the UK and Canada tell have diverged so dramatically that comparing them reveals something uncomfortable about the nature of national identity itself (Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration 2013).

Consider this hypothetical at the heart of every immigration system: a child is born and grows up speaking the local language, attending local schools, absorbing local culture, forming friendships. At what point does she belong? Is it the moment of birth? The accumulation of years? Or is belonging something that cannot really be granted by law at all, but simply is, regardless of what any government decides?

The legal theorist Joseph Carens argues that individuals who live in a society over an extended period become members of that society, as their lives intertwine with the lives of others there. These human bonds should determine rights, not bureaucratic categories. His position sounds reasonable until you watch a government act on the opposite assumption: that belonging is not earned through living, but granted through paperwork, and what is granted can be revoked.

The UK has embraced revocability with troubling enthusiasm. Since 2006, successive governments have stripped British citizenship from dozens of individuals, with the pace accelerating dramatically (House of Commons Library, Deprivation of citizenship briefing 12 January 2025). A Home Secretary can, with a stroke of a pen, transform a citizen into a non-person exiled from the only country they have ever known. This is not hyperbole. This is law. (Section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981)

Shamima Begum was fifteen when she was groomed online and trafficked to Syria. By any reasonable assessment, she was a victim a child exploited by adults. UN human rights experts have condemned her treatment.(United Nations Press Release March 06, 2024) A former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland said the government was wrong to strip her citizenship. Yet every British court has upheld the decision. She now sits in a camp, effectively stateless, despite Bangladesh's repeated insistence that she is not their citizen (Middle East Eye December 2025).

Her case exposes something unsettling about British belonging. For some citizens, membership is conditional rather than secure. In practice, deprivation powers fall mainly on people who are racialised and perceived as having another "home" to which they can be pushed back (Nisha Kapoor Citizenship Deprivation at the Nexus of Race, Gender and Geopolitics 22 February 2019). Citizenship functions less like a stable right and more like a discretionary privilege the state can withdraw. Legal scholar Audrey Macklin explains that when citizenship is treated as a privilege, it is understood as belonging to the state, not the individual. She calls this a ‘really dangerous idea’ because it makes everyone's most basic entitlements vulnerable to revocation.

Now cross the Atlantic. Canada's constitutional architecture rests on a different foundation. Section 27 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms[1] mandates that the Charter be interpreted consistently with the multicultural heritage of Canadians. This emerged from sustained activism by minority communities. The 1988 Multiculturalism Act[2] made Canada the first country to enshrine multiculturalism as official policy.

Long before Canada formally embraced multiculturalism, its record on refuge was dismal. When a senior official was asked in 1945 how many Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust should be admitted, his reply became infamous: ‘None is too many’ (BBC News November 2017). Between 1933 and 1948, Canada accepted only 5,000 Jewish refugees, the worst record of any Western country (Abella I and Troper H 1982). This earlier history, which pre‑dates the Multiculturalism Act by decades, exposes a deeper truth: immigration law has always been about more than regulating movement. It helps construct who belongs and defines the national self by defining who is ‘other’.

Yet the constitutional difference does matter. When the UK government introduced its ‘hostile environment’ policy in 2012 explicitly designed to make life ‘really hostile’ for people without documented status it turned landlords, employers, banks, and NHS staff into immigration enforcement agents (The Guardian November 2019). The Windrush scandal revealed the consequences. British subjects who had lived in the UK for decades were suddenly reclassified as illegal immigrants. (GOV.UK, September 2020). They lost jobs, were denied treatment, and were detained. At least 83 were wrongly deported, and some died before the government could even apologise. (The Independent, August 2018)

Canada has no equivalent policy framework. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom[3] entrenches both equality rights and Section 27's[4] multicultural mandate. This gives Canadian courts the power to invalidate discriminatory laws. The UK, by contrast, relies on ordinary legislation like the Equality Act 2010[5] and Human Rights Act 1998[6], which Parliament can amend or repeal at will.

Even the economics of belonging diverge. Naturalisation in the UK costs £1,580. Canadian citizenship costs roughly a quarter of the British price (House of Commons Library April 2025) (IRCC 2025). These figures are statements about value. The UK has created a system where belonging is purchasable by some and permanently unaffordable for others.

All of this raises a deeper question: should citizenship be understood as a right or a privilege? If it is a right, it belongs to the individual and reflects the accumulated bonds of a life lived within a community. If it is a privilege, it belongs to the state and can be granted, conditioned, and revoked. The UK has moved decisively towards the latter conception. Canada's constitutional framework, though far from perfect, pushes in the opposite direction.

The stories nations tell about belonging are not neutral descriptions of reality. They are legal, political, and moral choices about what kind of society we wish to be. Immigration law constructs national identity. 

Reforming it is an act of national reimagination. The real question is whether we are willing to imagine something better.

Kaleab Kiros Bereket

I am a DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery), an immigrant in Toronto and a law student with a particular interest in international law and how legal systems shape questions of justice and belonging. 

Before beginning legal studies, I trained and practised as a dentist and held multiple leadership roles in national and international organisations, representing Ethiopia in global health forums and coordinating projects serving marginalised communities. 

I aim to build on this leadership experience and interdisciplinary background to pursue a career at the intersection of international law, human rights, and social impact.