This work seeks to explain the immigration and citizenship policies in Britain that repeatedly postponed the creation of British citizenship until 1981. Existing works concentrated on the reasons for the racially discriminatory policy after World War II, analysing Britain's domestic constitutional system and the political manoeuvring between political parties or between policymakers and the public. In contrast, this volume looks at the alternative citizenships of British subjecthood and Commonwealth citizenship, and demonstrates how the complex rules of citizenship and immigration were...

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...