Marie Beauchamps has written a most timely book on denaturalisation. Using a set of cases spread throughout French history, she highlights both the recurrence of state actors making citizens foreign and the political and identitarian stakes involved. It is a frightening genealogy showing that citizenship is never to be taken for granted and is easily considered to be a privilege rather than a right by those with governmental power. Her book also makes a major contribution to security studies through its conceptually innovative analysis of how emotional economies of insecurity play out in political situations. It makes a great case for the importance of the archival study of citizenship practices and the political enactment of emotions to understand key aspects of the contemporary politics of insecurity.