JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 2024, VOL. 50, NO. 19, 4787–4808 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2376403 INTRODUCTION Introduction: mutual attrition of citizenship, democracy and the rule of law in South and Southeast Asia Mohsin Alam Bhata and Rudabeh Shahidb a School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, UK; bDepartment of Politics, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This special issue critically examines the interplay between the law and politics of state trans/formation, status precarity and the abuse of law. Globally, governments have exercised state power to undermine citizenship status, democratic well-being and the rule of law. This introduction makes the case for this focus and highlights the range of the special issue’s intervention. Firstly, it shows how the contributions in the special issue build upon scholarship that tackles these three values independently and offers a more comprehensive analysis of contemporary challenges of the law and politics of citizenship. It studies the mutual attrition of citizenship, law and democracy by adopting a focus on South and Southeast Asia, especially India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Secondly, it emphasises the special issue’s methodological contribution by drawing from the theory-generative capacities of focusing on Asia and the Global South more generally. Thirdly, the introduction highlights the cross-cutting substantive contributions of the articles, especially status liminality and statelessness, securitisation and authoritarian politics, bureaucracy and paperwork, and minority and human rights. Citizenship; the rule of law; democracy; South Asia; Southeast Asia Introduction Citizenship policies around the world are impacting the lives of millions of persons, rendering or threatening to render them stateless. Noteworthy about these policies is how states have strategically manufactured statelessness (Jain 2022), often by instituting bureaucratic and documentary regimes that weaken citizenship status of their own nationals (Balaton-Chrimes 2013; Canzutti 2022; Manby 2018). We are simultaneously witnessing a global phenomenon of democratic backsliding with the rise of majoritarian and xenophobic politics (Bermeo 2016). This special issue integrates the analysis of contemporary citizenship, democratic politics and the rule of law, based on the proposition that these three axes are intricately interconnected with profound implications for each other. Populist leaders have politicised or are seeking to politicise citizenship laws to target national minorities and consolidate their hold on power (Jayal 2022; Shaw 2020). They have appealed to their democratic mandates to legislate exclusionary citizenship policies and further aggravated CONTACT Mohsin Alam Bhat m.bhat@qmul.ac.uk © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group