316 R. Vecellio Segate and responsibilities, especially from a PIL perspective (Edwards 2014, 11; Macklin 2015, 224–225); but when it comes to rights and duties as delivered under positive domestic law, the status that articulates them is correctly defined as citizenship. The “Global North” (GN) stands apparently uninterested in reducing the scope of global “borderline citizenship” phenomena, or at least in doing so in such a genuine way that those who find themselves in those conditions could accept and volunteer for. Developed nations’ contribution to “segregation by bordering” is so deep and cruel that lawyers and human rights litigators have most recently resorted to international-criminal-law arguments and strategies, usually confined to the most atrocious failures of mankind (Kalpouzos 2020). Different is the stance of firstimpacted “developing” countries, where providing unregistered individuals with an identity (and possibly a legal status such as citizenship), and doing so digitally, features right at the core of the political agenda, starting with the massive, pioneering (however contested) Aadhaar system implemented in India. These States, however, lack the policy instruments as well as the know-how to address transnational “producers” of borderline citizenship as they (would) do with their own domestic borderline phenomena: remote digital onboarding in the context of borderline migration raises a series of challenges that cannot be successfully tackled by any jurisdiction alone, and where inter-State cooperation is made more difficult by the “high-politics” nature of today’s discourse on global migrations governance. Furthermore, it is worth problematising the “developmental” impetus impressed by (often GN-designed) digital identity systems to disadvantaged societies, where the hiatus between surveillance and humanitarianism seems increasingly a thin one to walk (Masiero and Bailur 2021), and too complex for some groups to appreciate, and thus negotiate or consent to. As a matter of exemplification, consider the “introducer”. Introducers are those who are supposed to “mediate” between undocumented communities and central state administrations, personally knowing and being known by both,3 in order to “onboard” the former and provide previously unregistered individuals with a publicly trusted identity record. In other words, introducers are trusted parties that can guarantee for one’s identity – though they cannot provide for assurances so trustworthy as to unlock the granting of new citizenships. While identifying trustworthy introducers domestically is enough of a challenge already, with e.g. India and the Philippines facing more resistance to and mistrust in the role than expected (Adelmant, Bingham, and Cioffi 2023, 18; Jacob 2019, 16–17; Ramanathan 2015, 14), their mediating role along transnational chains of borderline identity patterns proves exceedingly controversial and perilous: Who qualifies for the role? How could 3 However, under e.g. India’s Aadhaar, introducers only need to personally know and be known by the relevant state authority, i.e. the Registrar (Tiwari et al. 2022, 676).