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Abstract

This article responds to emerging claims within the literature to take politics seriously when explaining state’s security practices. In particular, it examines failures to expand citizenship deprivation powers on terrorism grounds and argues that the analytical framework of “failed securitisation” cannot alone explain these resistances. This article claims that critical security studies should take state’s constitutional structures into consideration when analysing state’s security practices. Drawing on an empirical comparison of changes to citizenship deprivation powers in France and the UK between 2014 and 2016, when the UK government succeeded in reinstating the possibility for the government to make individuals stateless in limited circumstances, but France failed to do the same, it shows that the French “resistance” has much to do with the rigidity of its constitutional structure.