Immigrants into Citizens

This paper examines the citizenship test which is part of the UK naturalisation process. The test is based on the government publication Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship. A detailed analysis of its two editions (2004 and 2007) reveals that the conception of the citizen, and the picture of British government and society underlying each are very different. There is, additionally, a mismatch between the rationale offered for the Life in the United Kingdom test and what the latter can in fact test: the attitudes and civic virtues mentioned in the rationale are untestable on-line. A society which aspires to be a democracy, it is argued, needs to scrutinise carefully the fairness and democratic appropriateness of its procedures for admitting new citizens.