Renunciation of citizenship

Renunciation is the voluntary act of relinquishing one's citizenship or nationality. It is the opposite of naturalization–whereby a person voluntarily acquires a citizenship, and is distinct from denaturalization–where the loss of citizenship is forced by a state.

The common law doctrine of perpetual allegiance denied an individual the right to renounce obligations to his sovereign. The bonds of subjecthood were conceived in principle to be both singular and immutable. These practices held on in varying ways until the late 19th century.

The refusal of many states to recognize expatriation became problematic for the United States, which had a large immigrant population. The War of 1812 was caused partly by Britain's impressment of U.S. citizens born in the UK into the British Royal Navy. Immigrants to the U.S. were sometimes held to the obligations of their foreign citizenship when they visited their home countries. In response, the U.S. government passed the Expatriation Act of 1868 and concluded various treaties, the Bancroft Treaties, recognizing the right to renounce one's citizenship.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists both the right to leave any country, including one's own (Article 13(2)) and the right to change one's nationality (Article 15(2)), which implicitly recognizes the right to renounce citizenship.

Renunciation of citizenship is particularly relevant in cases of multiple citizenship, given that additional citizenships may be acquired automatically and may be undesirable. Many countries have pragmatic policies that recognize the often arbitrary nature of citizenship claims of other countries and negative consequences, such as loss of security clearance, can mostly be expected only for actively exercising foreign citizenship, for instance by obtaining a foreign passport. People from some countries renounce their citizenship to avoid compulsory military service. However, some people may wish to be free even of the purely theoretical obligations and appearance of dual loyalty that another citizenship implies. Even in countries that allow dual citizenship, such as Jamaica and Pakistan, electoral laws demand that politicians not be under an obligation of allegiance to any foreign country, and so when politicians have been found to be violating such laws, they stepped down and renounced their other citizenships in response to the public controversy. Another example may be political refugees who would wish to renounce allegiance to the country from which they escaped.

...
Wikipedia