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Unlike the several liberal states Macklin cites which have already, or will soon, deploy citizenship revocation as an anti-terrorism mechanism, the United States is unlikely to implement similar policies. The U.S. Constitution has been interpreted to prohibit unilateral citizenship-stripping as a tool of governance. Instead, denationalisation via expatriation in the U.S. requires the individual to specifically consent to relinquish the status, and such consent cannot be inferred from acts alone – even from acts which some (including some commentators in this symposium) would like to characterise as intrinsically antithetical to citizenship identity.

It is possible to imagine carefully fashioned cases where denationalisation seems a morally appropriate response as long as a range of guarantees are met. However, while this realisation might help us identify the terms on which the denationalisation of a particular individual is permissible, it tells us little about the broader consequences of piercing the norm of unconditional citizenship for punitive reasons. Once we are realistic about the political dangers of conceding to the state powers to withdraw citizenship, we’re brought back to a position compatible with Audrey Macklin’s ban on denationalisation.

Macklin’s kick-off focused ‘exclusively on denationalisation for allegedly disloyal conduct by a citizen, while a citizen’. Most contributions to this debate weighed the predicament of the former citizen against state interests. In my contribution, I offer a typology of cases in which revocation could be sought according to some of the contributors. I contend that disowning of citizens by their states is incoherent, tenuous, or disingenuous.

I argue that the conceptual locus of the category banishment in today’s world is not banishment in the historical sense of the term, but a new kind of banishment that is predicated on the formation of geographies of privilege and disadvantage that cut across the divides of our modernity – East-West, North-South. The formation of such geographies includes a partial disassembling of the modern national territorial project, one aspiring (and dependent on) national unity, whether actual or idealised. This also means that there is a weakening of the explanatory power of the nation-based encasements of membership (for citizens, for firms, for political systems) that have marked our modernity. The micro-banishments I refer to are part of emergent and proliferating geographies of disadvantage (for citizens, firms, districts) internal to a country.

The purpose of this short intervention in the debate on initiated by Audrey Macklin, where the pros and cons of various forms of deprivation policies pursued by, or sought by, liberal states have been fully debated, is to add an element of EU law. Specifically, in the light of the judgments of the European Court of Justice in and , how – if at all – are Member States’ laws and procedures on involuntary loss of citizenship affected by EU law, given that the primary competence to determine the rules on the acquisition and loss of citizenship remains with Member States?

In this rejoinder I respond to the various contributors and defends my position regarding the normative, legal, and practical deficiencies of citizenship revocation on national security grounds.

This kickoff contribution argues that new conceptions of global citizenship are needed today and that new digital technologies might make them viable. Blockchain technology could provide, first, every person with a unique and internationally recognized and self-sovereign legal persona that could also serve to provide individuals globally with an equal voice in international affairs. Second, blockchain technology also permits individuals or international organisations to form cloud communities in cyberspace whose aim is political decision-making and in which individuals take part in a process of governance and the creation of law.

We are in the midst of a digital revolution that could transform societies worldwide as profoundly as the agrarian revolution of the Neolithic age and the industrial revolution of the 19 century did. No doubt, new technologies will also deeply affect the structure and boundaries of political communities and the meaning of citizenship. Liav Orgad tells a hopeful story about the benefits of blockchain technology. It can serve to create an international legal identity for every human being and new forms of non-territorial political community in which citizenship is based entirely on consent. I share Orgad’s sense of excitement about the speed and depth of change that we are witnessing. But I am less optimistic about the future of citizenship.

In the last decades, modern democracies have been witnessing a low rate of political participation and civic engagement with existing governmental institutions. Civic participation is not dead, however, it is only shifting to a new space. In the shadow corners of the internet, people are looking at blockchain technology as a means to replace many of our traditional institutions. While most of the attention was put, initially, on Bitcoin disrupting banks and other financial operators, as people understood the full potential of blockchain technology they saw it a means to implement new governance structures that could potentially replace some of our existing systems of governance. At the extreme end of this spectrum are those who envision the creation of new blockchain-based virtual nations, with a view to ultimately replace the nation state, or at least experiment with new and allegedly apolitical governance systems, which nevertheless play a crucial political function.

The citizen’s right to have a stake beyond national borders potentially bridges the cleavage between the globally mobile and the immobile. It belongs to, and appeals to the interests of, both classes of citizens. It can be exercised physically by the former group, and virtually by the latter through the novel channels that technology opens up. It is this very right that holds the potential to respond to nationalist and protectionist stances variedly represented in the contemporary political spectrum of several western countries.

To the extent that these stances are driven by fear and insecurity, the concrete conferral of a right to have a stake beyond one’s borders can teach the 21st century citizens an important lesson: that protection and security do not come from populist retrenchment into closure and exclusion. They rather come from the broadening of the umbrella under which citizenship claims can find accommodation. National citizenship can change to track not only the territorial boundaries of nation states but also the virtual ones of human stakes and interests.

Never mind the gap between the mobiles and the immobiles. New technology brings about the gift of global citizenship for the stay-at-homes.