Deceptive Citizenship as an Instrument of New War: Authoritarian Practices in a Post‐Colonial Context

ABSTRACT

The article demonstrates how, under authoritarian practices and post‐colonialism, a state employs deceptive citizenship as an instrument of a ‘new war.’ The deceptive citizenship operates within informational autocracy for a selected category of migrantised people, which make them unaware about the legal, political and mobility consequences of this status. By obscuring the legal, political, and mobility consequences of this status, it enables authorities to symbolically project power beyond territorial boundaries and consolidate their geopolitical post‐colonial standing among citizens. Using Russia's citizenship policies towards displaced Ukrainians between 2014 and 2022 as a case study, this article traces the complex genealogy of these policies and shows how, prior to the full‐scale invasion, they served geopolitical ambitions and postcolonial hegemony. At the same time, it demonstrates that displaced Ukrainians' citizenship practices were driven primarily by the need to cope with uncertainty and insecurity.