Research project Offloading Your Risk on Someone Else: Citizenship Deprivation and the Limits of State Responsibility in International Law
What international responsibilities do states have when they deprive individuals of citizenship on national security grounds, and how does the exercise of this power affect relations between the depriving state, other states of which the individual is a citizen, and the states in which affected individuals find themselves?
Since the early 2000s, more than a third of states have expanded provisions allowing them to deprive individuals deemed to pose security threats of their citizenship, particularly foreign terrorist fighters linked to ISIS. Existing scholarship has examined this practice primarily through the lens of individual human rights. This dissertation instead asks what citizenship deprivation means for relations between states. Using a scenario in which a dual national is deprived of citizenship by one state of nationality while residing in a third state, it examines how international law allocates responsibility when a state effectively offloads an unwanted individual onto other states. Where two states seek to deprive the same individual of citizenship, which state, if either, is entitled to do so?
This project examines citizenship deprivation as a question of public international law, situating it within the law of state responsibility, international human rights law, state sovereignty, and international counter-terrorism obligations. It traces the historical use of denationalisation and related practices, such as exile and banishment, and analyses how existing international legal frameworks address the consequences of citizenship deprivation once an individual crosses, or is left stranded across, international borders.
Employing a doctrinal method grounded in treaty law, customary international law, general principles of law, and case law, and drawing on the historical use of denationalisation, the study argues that existing rules on state responsibility, the prevention and suppression of terrorism, and human rights, together with general principles already provide a workable framework for resolving potential disputes between states.
The project is supervised by Professor Pål Wrange (Stockholm University, main supervisor), Professor Patricia Mindus (Uppsala University, assistant supervisor), and Dr. Sally Longworth (Stockholm University, assistant supervisor), who joined the supervisory team in January 2026, replacing Professor Mark Klamberg, who served as assistant supervisor from September 2021 to December 2025.