The Making and Unmaking of Citizenship

Citizenship in settler colonial states is illuminated through a paradox: it has a dual character, both emancipatory and repressive. In Canada, the Citizenship Act in 1947 marked the formal end of British subjecthood, expressing independence through Canadian citizenship. And yet, it unleashed the full force of the settler state against Indigenous peoples. Citizenship legitimated new modes of subjection; ones that aligned Indigenous peoples with immigrants, discounting their prior existence as political orders tied to the land. Externally, citizenship conveyed sovereignty and international personality, but internally, it remains haunted by inequality and colonialism.

 

This talk examined how the history and laws of settler colonial states such as Canada inform their citizenship, connecting the colonisers and the colonised over time. Settler colonialism destabilises the political core of citizenship from both ends. The first part traces the historical path from subject to citizen. I focused on the legal construction of Indigenous identities and British subjecthood as mutually exclusive, and on Britain’s conquest and rule of New France, which would become the Province of Quebec. Then I turned to the creation of independent Canadian citizenship in 1947, exploring its prior existence in the immigration realm. I also briefly described the state of contemporary citizenship law in Canada, including its relationship to the Constitution. Finally, I complicated the progression from subject to citizen, suggesting that what endures for Indigenous peoples as well as for the Province of Quebec conceptually exceeds the frame of state citizenship. I concluded with some thoughts about how citizenship maps onto settler colonial states.