Recent proposals put forward in countries such as Sweden, Finland and Germany reflect wider shift, say analysts
The plans, hatched by Sweden’s rightwing government with support of its far-right backers, made waves around the world. Politicians said they were working to strip citizenship from dual nationals who had been convicted of some crimes that threaten the state.
It was a hint of a broader conversation taking place in capitals around the world. As far-right and nationalist parties steadily gain political ground, analysts say that citizenship is increasingly being linked to crime, giving rise to a shift that risks creating two classes of citizens and marginalising specific communities.
The roots of these changes can be traced back partly to the early 2000s when the UK government – led at the time by Tony Blair – began casting citizenship as a privilege rather than a right, said Christian Joppke, a sociology professor at the University of Bern.
Recent proposals put forward in countries such as Sweden, Finland and Germany seemingly take this one step further, he added. “The new proposals now suggest that if you do any kind of serious crime, that should also allow for the possibility to withdraw citizenship – that is quite new.”
Days after Sweden announced plans to eventually change the constitution so that people convicted of crimes like espionage or treason could be stripped of their Swedish passports, a handful of politicians in Iceland began calling for similar changes for those convicted of serious crimes. Months earlier, the Dutch government said it was exploring the possibility of revoking citizenship for serious crimes that have “an antisemitic aspect”.
The concept also made a cameo in Germany’s February election after Friedrich Merz – whose centre-right CDU/CSU bloc emerged victorious in the ballot – told the newspaper Welt it should be possible to revoke German citizenship in the case of dual nationals who commit criminal offences.
“They can never truly be German. One mistake, one crime – and their Germanness is gone,” the journalist and political commentator Gilda Sahebi wrote on social media. “It doesn’t matter if they were born here or if their family has lived in Germany for generations.”
Joppke says that states once promised prosperity to their people, with that gone now the right can only promise physical security. What emerged was an overly simplistic view of crime, one that overlooks the myriad of research that has found no significant link between immigration levels and crime rates across Europe.
The law leaves dual nationals vulnerable to being punished twice for the same crime, if they serve prison time and then also face having their citizenship revoked. But it’s great media optics to say that you’re taking a strong stance against crime.
In some cases people are left stranded in the country that had stripped them of citizenship after the country of their other nationality refused to take them in. That means they basically become illegal,” she said, losing their right to stay and work in the country. The situation pushes them underground, making it easier for terrorist or criminal groups to potentially exploit them but also harder for officials to track them.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/26/how-idea-of-stripping-citizenship-for-crimes-spread-across-europe
Posted by Naurgul
13 comments
Really don’t like these plans. And I say this as someone who is not a fan of open borders immigration policy.
Make citizenship much harder to get, absolutely. But once you have it that should be it. As many rights as someone born there.
As a the adopter of several European citizenships, the idea that this is controversial is ludicrous to me:
“Politicians said they were working to strip citizenship from dual nationals who had been convicted of some crimes that threaten the state”
Freaking virtue signalling posers! You should not have been playing the proverbial “white knight” and handing out citizenship like candy to anyone showing up in the first place.
Now that they are citizens of your country, they are your problem. Deal with your citizens instead of looking to dump them on some other country.
I wonder how difficult it is for some of these criminals to renounce citizenship of their country of origin. My country has a simple system, where you automatically lose your citizenship the moment you become a citizen of another country.
lol, I’m sure this won’t be selectively applied in any way, and a dual danish-german or usa-anything national will get the exact same treatment as someone with a non-western second nationality (some of which are non-revokable by the way, making it do that legally speaking you can never truly cut ties, even if you want to)
Then people just won’t tell the state that they have dual citizenship. Why do they even have the right to know that? It’s not related to the state.
I know in some cases they just simply know that, but still, why are we forced to declare that?
The UK’s been stripping people of citizenship for years (with 220 people stripped of it between 2010 and 2022, nearly half of which [104] were in 2017 alone), including in one notable case where the person was born and raised in the UK, but on account of her mother being Bangladeshi, automatically had dormant Bangladeshi citizenship which would automatically expire if not activated before reaching 21. Multiple legal cases have concluded that although she’s now over 21, hasn’t activated her Bangladeshi citizenship and Bangladesh has started that not only would she not be granted citizenship if she applied but face capital punishment if she ever set foot there, she’s still technically eligible for Citizenship there so isn’t Stateless. Interestingly, around 400 IS fighters were allowed to return to the UK, most of which haven’t been prosecuted in UK courts…
Such proposals would be unconstitutional in many countries because it is discrimination against bi-nationals, they would effectively have weaker rights than other citizens. Unless you remove the citizenship of absolutely any citizen who commits a crime, but that would be really stupid.
One mistake….yes one mistake like joining isis…treason or terrorism.
If you hate it here then quite simple gtfo…as we don’t much like u either.
If you wanna live here and be part of what we are making together…let’s do it…but if u wanna join a death cult…nah…sorry cheerio.
BUT…and a huge but.
With great power….blah blah…it shouldn’t be used on e.g. pro palestine marchers…People advocating for e.g. republicanism…or even bloody Tommy Robinson…it needs to be when it goes the real real no point of return extremes.
Begum for example.
When native born neo-bazi’s commit criminal atrocities, will they have their citizenship removed?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_John_Hron
If they do, where do you send them? Are they still kept in jail, or escorted to the border without a passport?
Stripping people of citizenship for crimes is not a new idea, really weird to claim that. It’s a practice about as old as human civilization, where exile was pretty much *the* punishment.
The new idea was not doing that. Because leaving people stateless is really bad from a geopolitical standpoint.
It’s really annoying to see so much this idea that new = bad. Something can be old and still just as bad.
The left, as per usual, is overreacting to eminently sensible, centrist legislative proposals that enable the revocation of citizenship where serious crimes have been committed. The proposed measures do not implicate those who commit petty offences or even violent offences, like rape and murder. No, instead, they are targeted at crimes which evidence treachery towards the state such as terrorism, treason, and espionage. This is a fairly restrictive category of offences and is furthermore only applicable to dual nationals, which should obviate the concern of people being rendered stateless as a consequence of these measures. Does it create a situation of two-tiered citizenship? Of course, it does, but at the same time, the drawback of this discrimination is clearly outweighed by the benefit of not allowing literal terrorists (for example, Shamima Begum) to enter the country. No principle in law is absolute, and the right to equality before the law can certainly be qualified on grounds of national security.
I don’t believe a free, democratic and open country should be allowed to remove citizens because they broke a law, no matter how heinous that offence was, so I don’t think you’re preserving anything by doing as you suggest.
And beside, what if Musk/Trump/AFD or whichever ultra-authoritarian comes to power anyway? You’ve now given them even more options to fuck us over.
If you move to another country and enjoy the benefits that country offers you and then spit in the face of every law abiding person when you abuse that hospitality and commit crimes, you deserve no sympathy. You are not a victim.
This BS retort of “would it apply to a natural born citizen of German heritage?” No, only a complete dunce would think so. Not a lot you can do about those people except detain them if they commit crimes. But when it comes to those who have come here to take advantage of our societies, raping/killing/mugging/dealing/child abuse, absolutely they should have their citizenship stripped and they should be deported. They didn’t earn a right to be here and they didn’t show that they deserve to stay.
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