The People or the Demos?

• 1. In the early 1990s, following protracted civil war, Yugoslavia split up into the now independent states of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia. Yugoslavian citizenship ended. In Slovenia, the first state to declare its independence, everyone who lived in the territory had the choice of becoming a Slovenian citizen or leaving. Citizenship status came with the award of passports, registration of birth and death, the right to work, taxation and the like. A number of Yugoslav citizens either refused to adopt Slovenian citizenship or were denied citizenship. Eventually those deemed not truly Slovenian were moved onto a Register of Aliens, a total of nearly 25,000 people. Some insisted that they were Yugoslavian; others were deemed Serb, Croat or Bosnian. These so-called aliens suffered symbolic and civic death. They were erased from the Register of Permanent Residents of Slovenia (Vezovnik 2013). They could not legally die, claim property title, could not travel or work legally. In effect they became invisible to the Slovenian state and its functionaries. They were deemed aliens despite having no residence elsewhere. The articulation of a Slovene people required these exclusions, but also these forms of registration, affiliation and symbolic identification.

• 2. In November 2017, Albert Thompson checked in to his local National Health Service hospital for radiotherapy treatment of prostate cancer. On leaving, he was presented with a bill for £54,000. The UK Home Office said he could not prove his citizenship. The ensuing debate concerned whether or not Mr Thompson, who had lived in the UK for forty-four years, qualified as a citizen. He arrived a few months after the so-called ‘Windrush’ generation. This legal dispute over his citizenship status might have resulted in his death. In March of 2018 Theresa May refused to intervene, but after much publicity he was finally offered free care six months after the initial diagnosis. What the subsequent debate ignored is that thousands of so-called illegal immigrants – as well as those who have worked in Britain on temporary work visas – are refused care, deemed not to be of the people, unless they can afford to pay the full cost of care.