beliefs) or suspected sympathy with an enemy country was the reason for denaturalization, although in practice denaturalization primarily targeted people based on their birthplace. Denationalization laws adopted as an emergency measure during the war persisted afterwards. The height of denaturalization was in the first half of the twentieth century. Sociologist David Scott FitzGerald states, "Racialized denationalizations accompanied expulsions and population transfers on a massive scale following the remaking of nation-states around the two world wars." Two million former citizens of the Russian Empire, the "white émigrés", were denaturalized and made stateless by the Soviet Union in 1921. In the Western world, denaturalization virtually disappeared after World War II. Attempts to denaturalize Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians en masse in the aftermath of the war failed due to unfavorable court rulings and changes in public opinion. Court rulings in France and the United States limited the discretionary power of denaturalization. One argument advanced for the decrease in denaturalization is the increase in human rights norms and growing legal protection against statelessness. The United Kingdom, which has a high rate of denaturalization in the twenty-first century, did not denaturalize anyone between 1973 and 2002. In 2002, it changed the laws so that the Home Secretary could denaturalize individuals without passing through an independent review process prior to the denaturalization taking effect. After the law was changed, there was a surge in the number of denaturalizations. The 9/11 attacks brought on a heightened fear of terrorism; governments tried to reduce any legal obstacles to the unlimited exercise of executive power deemed necessary to combat the terrorist threat. Immigration law was seen as a powerful tool to exclude those people deemed threats to national security, but it could only be wielded against non-citizens. Hence, the introduction or expansion of denaturalization. The countries that introduced, expanded, revived, or considered denaturalization laws include Canada, France, Austria, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Australia, Egypt, and the Gulf States. Consequences Denaturalization does not necessarily result in an individual losing the right of legal residence in the country that revokes their citizenship, but it often does. Denaturalized people are often forced to return to countries with which they have few ties with far-reaching consequences for their family, professional, and social life and well-being. Deportation of denaturalized citizens may require lengthy legal proceedings depending on the case, and the country that they would be deported to may refuse to accept them, for