This book explains the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain that repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Multiculturalism as a distinct form of liberal-democratic governance gained widespread acceptance after World War II, but in recent years this consensus has been fractured. Multiculturalism in the British Commonwealth examines cultural diversity across the postwar Commonwealth, situating modern multiculturalism in its national, international, and historical contexts. Bringing together practitioners from across the humanities and social sciences to explore the legal, political, and philosophical issues involved, these essays address common questions: What is postwar multiculturalism? Why did it come about? How have social actors responded to it? In addition to chapters on Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, this volume also covers India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, and Trinidad, tracing the historical roots of contemporary dilemmas back to the intertwined legacies of imperialism and liberalism. In so doing it demonstrates that multiculturalism has implications that stretch far beyond its current formulations in public and academic discourse.

A contribution to the ongoing discussion of Australian citizenship. The articles reveal the complexity of Australian legislation as it has tried, over the years, to accommodate changing ideas about exactly what citizenship entails, and who is, or is not, eligible for it.

Only by being well informed is it possible for citizens to exercise their rights, fulfil their responsibilities and play their full part in the democratic process. The overall aim of this report, commissioned by the European Commission, was to explore the extent of the current and potential demand for citizenship information within the European Economic Area and to identify the contribution that the information services industry can make to meeting demand.

This book explains the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain that repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981. It examines the alternative citizenships of British subjecthood and Commonwealth citizenship, and demonstrates how the complex rules of citizenship and immigration were devised in response to the need to build and transform those 'global institutions', the British empire and later the Commonwealth. In covering these areas, this work extends the research beyond this century. It argues that Britain's formal membership has always been attached to the global institution and that the creation of British citizenship was rejected as long as policy-makers in Britain considered it beneficial to maintain the global institution in some form. In addition to the division between the holders and non-holders of British subjecthood, there was a future division among British subjects: those in Britain and the Dominions were regarded as kith and kin, whereas those in the colonies only had the same nominal status. The affinity between those in Britain and the Dominions was institutionalised in 1914 by the common code system, whereby Dominion governments were to adopt identical citizenship legislation. Post-Second World War immigration policy was, in practice, a continuation of pre-war policy, with an all-embracing citizenship law alongside exclusive immigration controls. The enactment of the British Nationality Act 1981 was a belated acknowledgement by the British government that its long-standing efforts to maintain the citizenship structure that enabled the alternative and national types of citizenship to co-exist had been abandoned by the Immigration Act 1971.