Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Teghe, Daniel
• Date: 01 January 1998

John Chesterman and Brian Galligan, Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 277pp., ISBN 052159751X, Aus$29.95.

Citizenship is a fluid concept which has preoccupied many thinkers almost from the beginning of Western history. Chesterman and Galligan acknowledge this straight away by referring to Aristotle's view of ideal citizenship as being dualistic, because the ruled should participate in the ruling. But what is not explicitly established is that the eventual advent of liberal thinking has meant that the notion of citizenship has been shaped according to individualistic and exclusive presumptions, rather than collective and inclusive assumptions. This has guided much of the colonial policies of the British Empire, and thus the early policy-making in Australia. Of course, this is not a mandatory aim for Citizens Without Rights. Instead, the book's principal purpose is to describe the systematic institutional arrangements through which Aborigines were excluded from Australian citizenship rights.

However, Chesterman and Galligan have not painted their descriptive account on a blank theoretical canvas. They present us at the outset, if only briefly, with a theoretical stance on citizenship which is based on Marshall's framework of civil, political and social rights. This framework is...