Immigration Article of the Day: When Women Were Aliens: The Neglected History of Derivative Marital Citizenship by Helen Irving

When Women Were Aliens: The Neglected History of Derivative Marital Citizenshipby Helen Irving University of Sydney – Faculty of LawJuly 17, 2012Sydney Law School

Abstract: Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, in virtually every country in the world, women who married foreign men were stripped of their citizenship, and turned into aliens in their own country. Marital denaturalization laws were supported by the international community until well after the Second World War: single citizenship, family unity, diplomatic convenience, and inter-state comity, were treated as imperatives that overrode women’s independent personal status. Such laws, which expanded at the very time when women were gaining legal and political rights, impacted radically, sometimes tragically, on individual lives, including rendering many thousands of women stateless. This essay gives an account of the emergence and evolution of such laws, with particular reference to Britain and the United States. It provides a ‘snapshot’ of individual cases, and an overview of the international community’s response.

KJ