The Unmaking of Citizens: Banishment and the Modern Citizenship Regime in France

• Published in: Citizenship studies Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 23 - 40
• Main Author: Kingston, Rebecca
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis GroupAbingdon, UK 01.02.2005
• Subjects: Ancien Régime; Citizens; Citizenship; Criminal justice; Criminal law; France
• ISSN: 1362-1025; 1469-3593
• DOI: 10.1080/1362102042000325405

As a means to shed light on modern citizenship, this article explores the history of the practice of banishment, deportation and the revocation of citizenship in the transition from the old regime to the new in France. Despite the acknowledged novelties in the understanding of citizenship ushered in with the French Revolution flowing from the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, it is evident that there was an important continuity with old regime principles, namely, the notion of citizenship as a privilege. Indeed, not only did the French state maintain its power to revoke citizenship and expel its members, but the new republican understanding of citizenship along with a more disciplined international environment led to the transformation of the practices in ways more severe and debilitating for the convicted. This history of expulsion and revocation of citizenship rights is used to illustrate a basic tension in modern understandings of citizenship between an inclusive understanding of citizenship committed to an ideal of universal rights and the political and civic criteria for belonging that have in practice been used to police members by revoking the very privileges on which their protection of basic rights depended. The study then gestures to a way of resolving the tension, namely, a consideration of the idea of a fundamental right of citizenship itself.