This article explores the effects of the UK citizenship test on migrants through the focus on the injunction to become an active citizen. We draw on qualitative interviews with 158 migrants of different nationalities who are at various stages in the process. We identify two responses. First, participants in our study drew on neo-liberal repertoires of active (knowledgeable) citizenship whereby they proved they are responsible and law-abiding agents of ‘social cohesion’ yet also simultaneously presented themselves as politically passive. Second, some participants perform critical, alternative narratives which contrast with the neo-liberal understanding of active citizenship. We note that these responses are not mutually exclusive and show the process of making sense of and positioning oneself around the competing, unsettled understandings of what counts as ‘active’ and what it means to be a citizen. The coexistence of these different responses shows that migrants going through the citizenship test process experience this policy instrument – and the injunctions on which it is based – in unsettling and contradictory ways. Through the citizenship test, and specifically the call to be an active citizen, adherence is sought to particular values – ‘British values’ – and the performance of active dispositions in a certain way. However, the neoliberal understanding of what it means to be an active citizen is also exceeded and challenged, in sometimes quite ‘ordinary’ and everyday ways. These coexisting and contradictory narratives bring to light the uncertainties through which migrants perceive the injunction to become an active citizen and the paradoxes of active citizenship more generally.

本文通过着眼于成为一名活跃公民的禁令，探索英国公民身份测试对移民的影响。我们对158个不同国籍的移民进行了定性访谈，他们处于调查过程的不同阶段。我们确定了两个答案。首先，我们研究的参与者借鉴了积极的（知识的）公民身份的新自由主义曲目，他们证明了自己是负责任的，具有守法精神的“社会凝聚力”人物，但同时也表现出他们在政治上是被动的。其次，一些参与者进行了批判性的，另类的叙述，这与对自由公民的新自由主义理解形成对比。我们注意到，这些回应并非互相排斥，而是说明了在竞争中了解和定位自己的过程，对于什么才算是“积极的”以及成为公民意味着什么尚未达成共识。这些不同反应的共存表明，经历公民身份测试过程的移民以令人不安和矛盾的方式经历了这一政策工具以及该政策工具所基于的禁令。通过公民资格测试，特别是成为积极公民的呼吁，力求坚持特定的价值观-“英国价值观”-并以某种方式表现积极的性格。但是，新自由主义对成为活跃公民意味着什么的理解也被超越和挑战了，有时甚至是“普通”和日常的方式。