Gender and racial discrimination in the formation of groups: Tribal and liberal approaches to membership in settler societies

Abstract

Introduction I was born in New Zealand, and I am also a citizen of the United Kingdom by descent. Both of my parents were born in Britain, but my mother’s citizenship is irrelevant to mine, because until 1983 the United Kingdom allocated citizenship to the foreign-born children of British-born men but not to those of British-born women. Like many other liberal democracies, until recently the United Kingdom discriminated against women by imposing patrilineality in the allocation of citizenship by descent. While the United Kingdom has amended its citizenship laws so that they are prospectively gender-neutral, the jus sanguinis principle of descent-based citizenship is nonetheless qualified by ..