2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) border communities, subject to a history of cross boundary migration flows, often either autochthonous or at least long settled in the countries in question, are reimagined as ‘illegal migrants’ in nativist nation building narratives. 12 In other cases, deprivation of citizenship may take place through irregular, discriminatory administrative practices, which result from abuse of authority and despite existing legal rights and remedial procedures on paper. 13 Such practices constitute administrative violence. Conceptually, administrative violence may be understood in the context of statelessness as ‘the use of all possible administrative means to de-legitimise the claims to citizenship by anybody feeling some sense of entitlement’. 14 This is how Claire Beaugrand defines administrative violence as experienced by the Biduns in Kuwait. In this particular case, Beaugrand identifies four mechanisms of delegitimisation of the Bidun’s claims: imposing an identity rejected by the concerned persons, the denial of socio-economic rights, a symbolic process of stigmatisation, and a complete lack of transparency. For the purposes of this research, administrative violence takes place primarily as the deprivation of individual rights by arbitrarily denying official documentation and/or citizenship and is ideologically grounded in nativism. The end result of such policies is the consideration of groups of inhabitants who are, or arguably descend from, migrants (often regardless of how many generations) as foreigners. Furthermore, citizenship is a tool of exclusion from an economic standpoint, shielding wealthier countries from impoverished migrants. 15 Hence, a mixture of xenophobia, racism (which in the three cases studied is linked to notions of postcolonial ‘whiteness’) and nativism together with classism serves to undermine legitimate claims to citizenship for impoverished migrants or otherwise internal minorities presumed to be ‘foreign’ and their descendants. 16 When such policies target large groups of persons who share a common cultural, religious or ethnic background, mass statelessness is produced. With this frame in mind, the following sections will analyse the earlier mentioned case studies. The existence of historical kinship lines across the border with neighbouring states has brought forward a nativist re-imagination of certain groups as invaders and infiltrators. This is the case in Rakhine State and wider Myanmar, the State of Assam in India and the Dominican Republic. Hence, the article will look comparatively at citizenship policies and their relationship to nativism, the progressive erosion of jus soli and administrative violence exercised in these three scenarios. The relevance of nativism to the communities concerned is also problematised. 12 13 14 15 16 See Tyler Anbinder, ‘Nativism and Prejudice against Immigrants’ in Reed Ueda (ed), A Companion to American Immigration (Blackwell 2006) 177–201; Hans-Georg Betz, ‘Nativism across Time and Space’ (2017) 23(4) Swiss Political Science Review 335. Claire Beaugrand, ‘Administrative Violence and Statelessness: Bidun’s Survival Strategies in Kuwait’ (2011) 101(2) The Muslim World 228, 234–36. ibid. Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Harvard University Press 1992). Alfred J López, Post-Colonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire (State of New York University Press 2005). 198