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2 Statelessness & Citizenship Rev. 195 (2020)
Fighting Imagined Invasions with Administrative Violence: Racism, Xenophobia and Nativism as a Cause of Statelessness in Myanmar, the Dominican Republic and Assam (India)

handle is hein.journals/stlenctzr2 and id is 210 raw text is: FIGHTING IMAGINED INVASIONS WITH ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE: RACISM, XENOPHOBIA AND NATIVISM AS A CAUSE OF STATELESSNESS IN MYANMAR, THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND ASSAM (INDIA) JOSE-MARIA ARRAIZA, * PHYU ZIN AYE** AND MARINA ARRAIZA SHAKIROVAI Discriminatory policies have the capacity to create statelessness on a massive scale and the majority of stateless persons around the world belong to impoverished minority communities. The intentionality of such discrimination is guided by xenophobia, racism and particularly nativism: the belief that an internal minority with foreign connections is a threat to the nation. Hence, target communities are re-imagined as an enemy invader. This article analyses and compares how such ideologies have resulted in statelessness in the cases of Myanmar, the Dominican Republic and the State ofAssam in India. These three scenarios have internal minorities (Rohingya in Myanmar, ethnic Haitians in Dominican Republic and Bengalis in India) that have been represented, based on kinship lines with neighbouring states, as enemy intruders by public officials and institutions. The authors compare how in the three scenarios nativist policies, the erosion of jus soli in citizenship laws and administrative violence have been used to fight' these imagined invasions and identify common trends. TABLE OF CONTENTS I Introduction........................................................................................................... 196 II Myanmar ...............................................................................................................199 A Citizenship and Nativism in M yanm ar..................................................... 200 B E ro sion of Ju s S oli....................................................................................2 0 1 C A dm inistrative V iolence........................................................................... 204 III Dominican Republic ............................................................................................. 206 A Citizenship and Nativism in the Dominican Republic ............................. 207 B E ro sion of Ju s S oli....................................................................................2 0 8 C A dm inistrative V iolence........................................................................... 209 IV Assam ................................................................................................................... 213 A Citizenship and Nativism in Assam and Wider India............................... 213 B E ro sion of Ju s S oli.................................................................................... 2 14 C A dm inistrative V iolence........................................................................... 2 17 V Comparative Analysis........................................................................................... 219 VI Concluding Observations...................................................................................... 221 * Jose Maria Arraiza is based in Madrid and holds a PhD from Abo Akademi University. He is a researcher on minority issues specialising in legal identity and land rights. He has worked in the humanitarian field in research and peace-keeping since 1998, in conflict and post- conflict contexts such as Kosovo, East Timor and Myanmar. ** Phyu Zin Aye is a PhD student at Mahidol University, Thailand. She focuses on citizenship, statelessness and refugees from a non-discrimination perspective. She also currently works at OXFAM and has previously worked on statelessness, displacement and minority rights issues with UNHCR and the Norwegian Refugee Council in Myanmar. Marina Arraiza Shakirova is based in The Hague. She holds an LLM from Maastricht University. She is a jurist researching citizenship and statelessness. In 2019, she received the Jaime Brunet award from the Public University of Navarra on human rights and development for her research on the situation of the Rohingya from a legal perspective.