Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the lived and material politics of the Overseas Citizenship Act (OCI) for non-resident Indians (NRIs) living in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

his paper examines the lived and material politics of the Overseas Citizenship Act (OCI) for non-resident Indians (NRIs) living in the UK. The OCI Act represents one of a series of initiatives in post-liberal India to invigorate and expedite a sense of tacit connection amongst NRIs with 'home'. Initially headlined as 'dual' citizenship in 2003 when the Act was passed, the OCI Act actually falls short of truly representing 'dual' citizenship since it provides the overseas Indian with a citizenship card rather than passport (Roy 2006). While the Act may be critiqued for its exclusionary and partial reality (Dickinson and Bailey 2007), it has nonetheless reconfigured how overseas Indians across migration generations imaginatively and physically (re)orientate themselves towards India. The paper is animated by questions of who, how and why overseas Indians are choosing to avail of this pseudo citizenship category, or not, and how decisions are shaped within translocal contexts. It will explore the ways in which NRIs with different migration histories differentially relate to, transact and engage with the idea and reality of overseas Indian 'citizenship' status and the citizenship card within a particular transnational setting.

Paper short abstract:

The present paper examines how Sri Lankan Tamils construct their life stories to seek asylum in France. It will focus on how unequal relations between asylum seekers and immigration institutions create both processes of subjection and forms of resistance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper provides a reflection on institutional biographies, namely on the relationship between Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers and French asylum courts. It will be mainly based on an ethnographic investigation carried out at an office for the drafting of life narratives for Sri Lankan Tamils seeking asylum in France. Data collected during judicial hearings at the French asylum courts, and interviews with lawyers, judges, immigration officers, physicians and asylum seekers, between 2009 and today, shall also be presented.

How do these asylum seekers turn their life memories - often marked by violent episodes - into judicial accounts, in the attempt to persuade their examiners to grant them political refugee status? What are the "state effects" (Mitchell 1999) of the procedure?

My hypothesis is that asylum claims produce two phenomena. On one hand, a process of subjectivisation is engendered, where refugees are subjected to the state and encouraged to develop self-awareness as subjects of individual stories and rights (Fassin 2000, 2004). On the other hand, forms of resistance to exclusion and to the process of individualization induced by the asylum procedure (which, in Europe, treats every case individually) are also produced. To give more credibility to theirs statements, Tamils often describe events that did not happen to them but to someone whose story they know. A shared knowledge, which asylum seekers may use to complete their judicial account, is therefore created, as a form of resistance to individual treatment, perceived as a negation of their collective history.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines notions of identity and citizenship in the migration process of immigrant women of South Asian descent who came to Natal as `free’ Indians.

Paper long abstract:

When Indians migrated from India to Natal in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as both indentured and free Indians, women were an important component of the newcomers. This paper examines notions of identity and citizenship amongst in the migration process of immigrant women of South Asian descent who came to Natal as `free' Indians. Women's decision to migrate were influenced by immigration policies in Natal and in British India. Immigration policies were gendered and regulated the entry of women in Natal in two ways. Firstly, migration policies characterised the male as the primary citizen and females as dependents. A married women seeking entry into Natal (and later the Union) could only enter the country if her spouse had a valid domicile status. Women rarely arrived as independent candidates. Thus married women's identity and citizenship rights in the migration process were, by and large, constructed by their relation to men. The inclusion of theses narratives will stimulate a rethinking of the gendered experiences of the South Asian diaspora from an African perspective and in the context of concomitant differences among ethnic groups, social mobility, and the processes of acculturation and integration. Moreover, it will bring to the fore a category of immigrant women whose histories have yet to be fully explored and documented.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the case of a community of Bengali immigrant settlers along the coast of Odisha at the centre of a unique citizenship controversy.

Paper long abstract:

Even as the debate around identity documents in India is currently dominated by the new technologies of identification, this paper highlights yet unresolved questions of identity and citizenship. It discusses the case of a community of Bengali settlers in the coast of Odisha that are immigrants from Bengal, both West Bengal and former East Pakistan, or Bangladesh, that is at the centre of a unique citizenship controversy. Families have arrived gradually over the years since 1947, and have generally acquired a range of identity documents by Indian state agencies. These documents certify to a range of rights that signal social and political participation within India: land ownership, voting rights and the receipt of official welfare subsidies. With little warning, a 2005 order by the state government following a high court directive led to the production of a list of 1551 persons. The list ostensibly comprises those who have entered India illegally after 1971 or born to parents who entered illegally. While no deportation, as originally intended, has taken place, the nullification of their various documents of citizenship has created a void in their lives. This paper examines the wider politics of the case, especially focusing on how those with nullified documents negotiate the authority of the local state and within their own society, and what this reveals about the ever contested nature of citizenship in post-partition India.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the various documentary experiences of the poor residing in the city's margins are constitutive of 'pedagogies of gendered citizenship'. It explores the relationship between identity documents, forms of literacy and gendered frameworks of citizenship in Delhi's slum spaces.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that the various documentary experiences of the poor residing in the city's margins are constitutive of 'pedagogies of gendered citizenship'. By this, I mean that the various encounters of female slum residents with identification documents shape certain instrumental and symbolic forms of knowledge about the city, citizenship, governance and urban belonging. Urban poor encounters with identity documents produce 'piecemeal pedagogies' where slum residents try to educate each other about bureaucratic channels and application procedures in and through handling documents. Such encounters also yield thick knowledge about the city and gendered frameworks of access and entitlement. These arguments are made through an assessment of various forms of female literacy complicated by unequal social relations. This paper projects various documentary triggers of female literacy in the slum cluster, laying out various definitions of conventional and political literacy and what kind of piecemeal and thick pedagogies are rendered possible by the complex relationship between these literacies. The pedagogic process is framed by the unreliability of political patronage in the face of arbitrary selection of welfare beneficiaries, the fear of illegal migration, gender-neutral governance and the shifting economies of enumeration in a slum setting. I present this paper through a considered examination of ethnographic evidence of female slum residents testing the boundaries of literacy and citizenship against the backdrop of enumeration technologies in the past two decades in Delhi.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines India's novel biometric identification programme (Aadhaar) and the firm insertion of the knowable body into an array of criteria for recognition by the state. It asks how this form of individual identification informs notions of citizenship and residence.

Paper long abstract:

Inaugurated in 2009, the Indian government's Aadhaar (foundation) scheme aims to issue each of India's 1.2 billion residents a twelve-digit Unique Identification Number (UID), linked to individual biometric (iris scans, fingerprints, facial photograph) and demographic indices. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) cites "fake", "duplicate" and "ghost" identities as the biggest obstructions to governance and hopes, in time, to replace all material identity documents with this electronically verifiable biometric-based ID. Paradoxically, applicants are asked to furnish prior identification—the very documents the UIDAI views with suspicion— before they are issued a UID. Since the UIDAI aims to create a database inclusive of all residents within India's territory, it has also created a provision allowing individuals without documents to enroll for a UID. These residents may be "introduced" to the UIDAI by certified organizations or individuals. The UID guarantees "identity", not citizenship or benefits. In 2013, responding to concerns over indiscriminate UID allocation, the Supreme Court of India passed an order saying that no "illegal immigrants" may be issued UIDs. The order prompts certain critical questions: biometric confirmation that "you are who you say you are"--what "identity" does it generate? How does the UIDAI's "one body, one number" dictum articulate with reigning criteria for legal recognition by the Indian state? Does privileging the corporeal as a source of identity disrupt notions of citizenship? This paper addresses debates precipitated by the UID concerning the body and identity, residence and citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the effect of India's new biometric-based ID on the lives of poor migrants to the industrial township of Noida. It asks whether access to housing and employment opportunities have been eased up by the UID in this region and what emergent forms of citizenship it is enabling.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces the process whereby new biometric-based IDs called UIDs are administered by the state as well as utilised by poor migrants living in a slum in Noida outside Delhi. The UID pegs its utility on its technological sophistication, which will (the project claims) enable a perfect and foolproof form of identification of individuals. My paper will explore this claim empirically on the basis of fieldwork conducted in Noida. In particular, I will study the effects of the ID in gaining access to housing and employment opportunities for this traditionally difficult-to-identify community of mobile migrants to urban areas. My central concern is to examine what an ethnography of the UID project can tell us about the re-imagination and reconfiguration of statecraft in contemporary India as well as what emergent forms of citizenship it can illuminate.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the changing contours of citizenship documentation within India through a case study of AADHAR (Unique Identification Scheme) and its wider implications for the relationship between identity politics, technology and citizen-formation.

Paper long abstract:

India has always been culturally diverse, and this diversity has been acknowledged by giving special rights to minority groups leading, in Iris Marion Young's terms (1989), to a group-differentiated citizenship regime. Hence, while in Western democracies citizenship has been centred on the individual, the nodes of citizenship in India have been community-oriented. However, in recent times one can increasingly witness the emergence of the individual as a socio-political unit coinciding with the burgeoning influence of liberal market economy and a 'good governance' paradigm emphasizing a market concept of equality, while turning "citizens" into "customers". This trend is further accentuated by the massive inlets of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) into governance mechanisms having a significant impact on the way citizenship is certified in post-colonial nation-states. Given this wider context, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to capture the politics behind the recent Unique Identification Scheme (UID), or AADHAR scheme initiated by the Government of India that seeks to give every Indian citizen a unique identity document. Criticized on the grounds of accumulation and storage of personal data (such as fingerprints and an iris scan), it nonetheless provides a valid identity to people who might not have other formal identity documents, thus giving them a legal status and making them eligible to government benefits. Though declared non-mandatory by the Supreme Court of India in September 2013 for its potential to be exclusionary, this scheme provides important insights into the complex relationship between citizenship, identity politics and use of technology by the government in India.

Paper short abstract:

Exiled Tibetans in India are simultaneously ‘citizens’, 'refugees' and ‘foreign guests’. This paper examines the materiality and symbolism of identity documents issued to these individuals by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile and Government of India to explore Tibetans’ legal and political identities

Paper long abstract:

Exiled Tibetans in India are an unusual marginalised population; with their own government structure operating within the state of India they are simultaneously 'Tibetan citizens' in the eyes of the Tibetan government-in-exile, 'refugees' in the eyes of the international community and 'foreign guests' in the eyes of the Indian state. Caught in this legal limbo, Tibetans daily negotiate their position vis-à-vis these governments - one theirs but unrecognised, the other their long-term 'host'. The aim of this paper is two-fold; to chart the contradictory relationship between Tibetans in India and each of the two 'states' which identify, label and document them through the lens of the identity documents issued by the Tibetan and to examine how citizenship is created and negotiated by a political community without sovereignty over territory. Such analysis of the relationship between the state and the individual and the state's role in identity construction will be examined through the identity documents issued by the exiled Tibetan administration and the Government of India. A focus on the differences between these documents - both effective and affective - enables a picture of a population caught between two 'states' to emerge. Moreover, if identity papers are to be seen as the point at which the state passes into material form, then the question of how this happens when the state in question is unrecognised and lacks sovereignty over territory becomes salient.

Paper short abstract:

Regimes of identification have to be seen in their concrete materiality to understand their effect on social life and contemporary capitalism. This paper probes the quotidian exclusions they produce and their effect on working class mobility, employment opportunities and resistance.

Paper long abstract:

Various types of identity cards are deployed by the state that are occasionally used to govern population movements within a country. They are part of a regime of identification and are bound up with social security systems and citizenship rights. Critiques of such regimes have largely centered on the infringement of privacy and the politics of representation that they involve. I argue that these regimes of identification have to be seen in their concrete materiality to understand their effect on social life and contemporary capitalism. Drawing on fieldwork in construction sites and factory premises in Ernakulam district and a market frequented by migrants in Perumbavoor, a small city near Kochi in Kerala, this paper probes the materiality of these cards in the sense of the quotidian exclusions they produce and their effect on working class mobility, employment opportunities and resistance. Migrant workers from north and north eastern India and unionized malayali workers in construction sites and factories in Kerala battle for and against these cards. These regimes of identification engender and occasion solidarities and divisions within the working class in the context of temporary migration for work in India. Migrant workers resist not necessarily class power that inheres in capital but in state and surveillance practices. Through this process, they participate actively in the production of capitalist landscapes in Kerala. In addition, this paper also examines the contradictions and nexuses between state and capital in regulating movements of people. Towards the end, I link the paper to recent debates on Aadhaar and "illegal immigrants".

Paper short abstract:

In a context of immigrant flows, it aims to address the question of citizenship in the context of Bengali migrants in Assam and Odisha and Chakma refugees in Arunachal Pradesh in a comparative perspective.

Paper long abstract:

The opening of the twenty-first century has witnessed continuing controversies over how nation-state should respond to potential immigrant flows. The phenomenon of migration has significantly affected one of the main foundations of nation-state: citizenship. As a consequence of the increasing pressure of international migration, citizenship laws have moved to the centre stage on policy agenda. The debates over migration and citizenship are complex because of the entry of different types of migrants into the Indian territory and all of them have not conferred with citizenship rights. While some of the migrants can be integrated into existing political institutions and legal frameworks, others can not.

In a democratic set-up, the idea of citizenship has to be seen in the respective context. Since migration is an ensemble of communal, economic, historical and environmental elements, the specific situation of the country becomes prominent. Within this backdrop, this paper explores some of the ways that the Indian practice of democratic citizenship has been affected by the movement of people across political boundaries. It interrogates issues involving migration, state and citizenship. Focusing on the migrants/refugees question in India, it attempts to understand the complex relationship between refugees and the Indian state. It delves into the complex process in which these non-citizens acquire citizenship rights and the crucial role of the state. To put it differently, it aims to address the question of citizenship in the context of Bengali migrants in Assam and Odisha, and Chakma refugees in Arunachal Pradesh in a comparative perspective.