If there ever was a perfect time for this volume to appear in print, this is it, as across the world at this very moment, the challenges po...
If there ever was a perfect time for this volume to appear in print, this is it, as across the world at this very moment, the challenges posed by the realities of forced migration and displacement both within and across international borders are being responded to by nation-states by the parallel creation of a global crisis of citizenship itself. Although much of the world continues to accord citizenship rights based on either jus soli, “right by birth on soil”, or jus sanguinis, “right by birth of blood” (in addition to marriage and naturalisation by long-term residence, both of which we shall ignore here), many nation-states have accorded a crucial role to documentation to reconfigure both these definitions as neither necessary nor sufficient, and contingent on other laws that regulate documentation itself.
Where once the birth certificate of an individual and/or her parents and their passports signified the state’s official recognition of the individual’s citizenship, today these signifiers are being emptied of content.
The Indian Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003 also require the Indian government to maintain a “national register of Indian citizens” (NRC), and to issue national identity cards to all. The NRC was indeed prepared...
