Birth registration, as an exercise of state power, is one mechanism of inclusion/exclusion—a bordering practice.

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This project uses a feminist migration lens help to understand patterns and mechanisms of exclusion from birth registration and the production of statelessness in contexts of human mobility.

We are exploring what this conceptualization of ‘birth registration as bordering practice’ reveals about the global and national governance of human mobility and citizenship.

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Typology of Birth Registration Bordering Practices

Corporeal

  • State family planning policies
  • Gender-based violence
  • Hospital documentation practices
  • Blocked access to reproductive healthcare
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Social

  • Civil registrar discretion
  • Gender + religious + ethnic discrimination
  • Marital status discrimination
  • Gender inequality in women’s independent access to their own ID
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Spatial-Territorial

  • Politicized birth registration practices as part of conflict / contests over territory
  • Consolidation of postcolonial state control over territorial borders and borderlands through birth registration
  • Politicized birth registration practices as part of conflict / contests over territory
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Spatial-Mobile

  • Migration enforcement within birth registration process
  • Legal and administrative obstacles for foreign parents with precarious status
  • Deficient consular civil registration services
  • Refugee identity management
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Temporal

  • Registering minorities and stateless persons as foreigners
  • Indefinite deferral of decision
  • Late birth registration
  • Mandatory DNA testing for multiply marginalized groups
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