Citizenship unlikely to be ‘earned’ through compulsory voluntary work

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Damian Green described the idea of "earned" citizenship as ‘half-baked’, which seems to indicate that the new government is not in favour of Labour's policy of making migrants ‘earn’ British citizenship by doing regulated volunteering, otherwise known as ‘active citizenship’.

Under the Labour policy introduced in 2009 through the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act, migrants applying for British citizenship would have been required to ‘earn’ their passport, a process which could be speeded up by partaking in voluntary work from next year onwards.

The implication of this policy was analysed in a report published earlier this year by Migrants' Rights Network and Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum called "Should Citizenship be Earned through Compulsory Volunteering?". The report made it clear that the new government should withdraw the Active Citizenship proposal. Both organisations felt that the then government had not consulted key stakeholders and that the active citizenship proposal wouldn't achieve the government's integration objectives. Furthermore the policy would undermine genuine volunteering among migrants and refugees.

As we believe that volunteering is very important for individual volunteers and for wider communities, both organisations would like to use this opportunity to call on the government to follow the recommendations from the report in order to expand voluntary activity among migrant and refugee communities. This is a good opportunity to move the debate away from the obsession with numbers and to look properly at the very real contributions made by migrants that currently fall under the radar.

Firstly, the government needs to acknowledge the volunteering that is already under way by many refugees and migrants. This existing activity should not be undervalued and ought to be properly recognised under the new big society proposal. In order to achieve this MRN and MRCF suggest that the volunteering done by refugees and migrant is properly mapped along with any barriers to accessing mainstream volunteering opportunities.

Secondly, targeted support is needed to facilitate migrant and refugee volunteering and to address barriers to accessing volunteering opportunities. The development of government support for expanding refugee and migrant volunteering could have an extremely positive impact. If done properly this would alleviate the funding needs of many community-based organisations and underpin a wider two-way integration strategy.

Dropping active citizenship from the policy agenda would certainly be a welcome move which would be a victory for campaigners in this area and advocates of migrants’ rights. However, there is unfortunately no reason to believe that the overarching framework for ‘earned citizenship’ will be subject to change, and the Home Office announcement today indicates that the government is intent on closing down migrants’ routes to citizenship. We can anticipate that plenty more battles over migrants’ ability to settle in the UK lie ahead.