4796 M. A. BHAT AND R. SHAHID Finally, these insights collectively reveal the nature of status liminality. Liminality in citizenship surpasses geographical and historical confines, and as the experience in the region reveals, surpasses even contexts of actual population mobility. Status liminality, in fact, is constituted by the political dynamics of state formation. The articles elucidate how bureaucratic processes, legal frameworks, and political manoeuvres reshape citizenship from a secure status into a precarious, liminal state. This state of in-betweenness is not a transient phase but a persistent condition marginalising entire communities, posing challenges to democratic principles and legal norms. This is perhaps best captured by Bhat’s and Sharma’s description of the aftermath of the National Register of Citizens in Assam, where, after having classified 1.9 million persons as ‘foreigners’ in 2019, the Indian state has kept the policy in abeyance. Here, precarious groups – mostly vulnerable and poor ethnic and religious minority communities – are liminal, not because they are moving from status to stateless. They are liminal because they appear to now be in a state of suspended animation: neither citizen nor stateless. These insights shed light on the inadequacies of the ‘statelessness’ category in capturing the precise political and legal vulnerabilities within national territories. They underscore the fundamentally political nature of the problem, cautioning against a policycentric approach that focuses solely on legal identities and technocratic resolutions. Instead, they advocate acknowledging the deeply political nature of these challenges, echoing sentiments expressed by earlier scholars like Arendt (1973). A focal point lies in the complexity of non-citizenship (Tiwari et al.) and statelessness (Bhat). The articles collectively argue for an evolution in the traditional understanding of citizenship and legality to accommodate the rights and personhood of non-citizens grappling with legal limbo due to documentation issues. This complexity underscores the importance of addressing the broader implications of statelessness for affected individuals and the legal and political systems they navigate. Securitisation and citizenship attrition The articles collectively emphasise the power of securitisation processes, often fuelled by diverse security concerns, in shaping not only policies but also the very construction of identities. The articles explicitly or implicitly grapple with securitisation theory, developed Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde (1998) of the Copenhagen school, which claims that security is a social construct, and how any issue can be transformed into a ‘security issue’ if it is exaggerated to the point being an ‘existential danger’ (Williams 2003). Huysmans (2006) examines how in Western Europe, migration has evolved into a significant security issue through the European integration process. He details how the political construction of migration has increasingly been linked to the destabilising effects on domestic integration and public order, a development mirrored at the European level by the Third Pillar on Justice and Home Affairs, the Schengen Agreements, and the Dublin Convention. This framing is indicative of a wider politicisation where immigrants and asylum-seekers are seen as challenges to the protection of national identity and welfare provisions, underlining the role of migration as a tool in the politics of belonging and security concerns within European societies. This European experience provides a critical parallel to the narratives seen in South Asian contexts, where security concerns lead similarly to expansive and often exclusionary practices.