Part I. Introduction and Context making it important to distinguish between those who were to enjoy the political and economic benefits of a state.78 To make this identification possible, it was necessary to introduce systems of registration, administration and identity documentation. These systems simplified practice and were “devoted to rationalizing and standardizing” in order to make societies governable and legible.79 “Passports became essential to the bureaucratic administration of modern mass migration, just as identity cards have become something like the ‘currency’ of domestic administration, marking out eligibles from ineligibles in the areas of voting, social services and much more besides.”80 This “administrative ordering of nature and society” has been held to “undergird the concept of citizenship”.81 Systems for the registration of identity “have been crucial practical tools which have facilitated the endowing of all individuals with legal personhood, which is defined as the entity to which rights and duties are ascribed by law”.82 At the same time, not only individuals benefit from, for instance, birth registration. For a modern state, benefits “include the effective functioning, planning and monitoring efforts”83 of such a state. As such, the existence of and possibility to distinguish between legal conceptions of nationality and statelessness are logically related to systems of administration, registration and identification of people. Even though there is evidence that registration of people and households already existed during the Han Dynasty in China (2nd century BC)84, Europe has had a tradition of registration of people, probably already in ancient times.85 Evidence of registration of 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 22 John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge University Press 2000) 121. James C Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press 1998) 2–4; Christiane Reinecke, ‘Staatliche Macht im Aufbau: Infrastrukturen der Kontrolle und die Ordnung der Migrationsverhältnisse im Kaiserreich’ in Jochen Oltmer (ed), Handbuch Staat und Migration in Deutschland seit dem 17. Jahrhundert (De Gruyter 2015) 342. John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge University Press 2000) 121. James C Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press 1998) 4. Simon Szreter and Keith Breckenridge, ‘Editor’s Introduction. Recognition and Registration: The Infrastructure of Personhood in World History’ in Simon Szreter & Keith Breckenridge, Registration and Recognition. Documenting the Person in World History (Oxford University Press/British Academy 2012) 22. Wendy Hunter, Undocumented Nationals (Cambridge Elements in the Politics of Development, Cambridge University Press 2019) 2. Michel Poulain & Anne Herm, ‘Central Population Registers as a Source of Demographic Statistics in Europe’ (2013) 68 Population 183. See for instance the Bible, Luk. 2:1–3, which says that the Roman emperor had ordered a registration or census, causing Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem to register themselves. The Roman Empire also encompassed large parts of what we call ‘Europe’ for the purposes of this study (i.e. the member states of the CoE). See also Etienne van de Walle, ‘Historical Development of Civil Registration Systems: A European Perspective’ (2018) UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Technical Paper No. 2018/1, 2 <https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ Intersentia