Abstract
This article examines the legal foundation to membership of the community, commonly discussed as citizenship. Using two examples (1) people born in the Australian territory of Papua before Papua New Guinea Independence in 1975 with one Australian citizen parent, and (2) British subjects resident in Australia for most of their lives it argues the law, in a lottery-like fashion, currently operates to exclude from membership those who rightly identify as Australians. This diminishes normative conceptions of citizenship as a progressive, egalitarian concept, which in other contexts governments seek to promote.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 45-61 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Law in Context |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2004 |