Fighting Imagined Invasions with Administrative Violence V COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS A comparison of Myanmar, the Dominican Republic and the State of Assam in India brings out interesting commonalities. First, in all three cases nativism — the idea that the nation is threatened by an internal minority (with real or imagined migrant origins) with alleged links to foreign states — has been determinant in the making of citizenship laws and policies. In this sense, the three cases show that denationalisation is usually a long-term historical process: a series of discriminatory and arbitrary acts, the cumulative effect of which makes people stateless. This makes it more difficult to remedy the situation. Moreover, deprivation of nationality is often exercised through the administrative violence of bureaucracy: procedures are implemented discriminatorily to prevent individuals from exercising their legal identity rights. In all three countries there is a similar narrative which reimagines the ethnic ‘other’ as a peaceful invader who threatens the pillars of the nation. The need to fight such peaceful invasion justifies the use of administrative violence and discriminatory legislation. In the case of India, we see this in the reasonings of the Supreme Court. 173 In Myanmar, the Rohingya are seen as a threat to the territorial integrity of the state, with the assumption that demographic dominance of this group would lead to a partition of Northern Rakhine and its incorporation to Bangladesh. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 had a deep impact in the domestic immigration and citizenship policies concerning both Assam and Rakhine States. 174 Similarly, the demographic dominance of ethnic Haitians in the border areas was seen as a ‘pacific invasion’ and a threat by the Dominican government that justified violence and discrimination against ethnic Haitians. The three cases show in this sense a commonality: the existence of a minority with alleged connections to a bordering ‘kin-state’ (Haiti for the Dominican Republic and Bangladesh for India and Myanmar), which is seen as a threat by their host country. In contrast with such nativist visions, both Dominicans of Haitian descent, Assamese Bengali and Rohingya and other disenfranchised minorities in Myanmar consider themselves full citizens of the countries where they live (or used to live). Despite such allegiance, all three countries have engaged in a boundary making exercise through administrative violence, discriminatory laws and sometimes direct physical violence against the targeted minorities. Secondly, a trend towards the erosion of jus soli provisions and the emergence of jus sanguinis as the primary criteria is observed as part of the earlier mentioned tendency in the recent legislative history all the three countries studied. A move towards ethnicisation of the citizenship framework is clearly visible in Myanmar (through the prominent concept of the Taingyingtha in the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law), to a lesser extent in Assam (with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 to the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955 clearly prioritising certain religious backgrounds being the exception) and less visible still in the laws of the Dominican Republic. 175 In all, the difference with the Dominican Republic is that arguably ethnically neutral laws are applied in a discriminatory manner through administrative violence against Haitians and their descendants (the group that is least likely to have their papers in order). 173 174 175 Sonowal (n 3). Smith (n 27) 43. Burma Citizenship Law 1982 (n 18); Indian Citizenship Act, 1955 (n 140). 219