NCJ Number
159925
Date Published
1993
Length
36 pages
Annotation
The usefulness of the concept of citizenship in understanding the material and ideological conditions under which black people in the United Kingdom are criminalized is discussed, with emphasis on the distinction between legal and subjective citizenship.
Abstract
Legal citizenship refers to the rights of citizenship, while subjective citizenship recognizes the exclusions from full citizenship that black people experience. Analysis of postwar immigration and social policy reveals the ways in which black people are by definition regarded as other than British citizens. For black people, citizenship is partial and continent at best. Black people are not full citizens once and for all; instead, they must constantly re-prove their entitlements in a series of day-to-day encounters with the police and a variety of government officials such as immigration officers and health officials. For all these agencies, black people are questionable and subject to suspicion. The analysis concludes that criminalization is a powerful component of this discourse of exclusion. Note