Fighting Imagined Invasions with Administrative Violence Myanmar and Assam see the possibility of foreigner males having sexual relationships, or marrying, national women as a national threat. Interestingly, in the Dominican Republic it is the opposite: Dominican men who partner with Haitian or Haitian descended women are seen as the threat. This is reflected in either explicit discriminatory legislation, as in the case of the Myanmar ‘race and religion laws’, the Indian laws concerning ‘abducted persons’ or discriminatory practices, as in the case of the Dominican Republic. The various implications of gender considerations in the making of nativist citizenship laws and policies warrant also further research. In terms of differences, there are a variety of features that are unique to each of the countries from the perspective of this analysis. The quasi-apartheid regime that has been present in the State of Rakhine in Myanmar since the 1970s is a salient difference. The Burmese effort to enumerate who are the indigenous natives is also very peculiar to Myanmar, as is the fact that naturalisation is not possible at all. The almost absolute lack of effective administrative and judicial remedial avenues in the Burmese context is also unique (even though Assam comes quite close with its Foreigner Tribunals). Of the three states, the Dominican Republic is the only one where citizenship policies have come under scrutiny of a human rights judicial body, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, this has not yet resulted in a significant improvement on the protection of the right to a nationality. VI CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS The ideologies of racism, xenophobia and, particularly in its nationalist version, nativism are important root causes of mass statelessness in ethnic and religious minorities. The imagining of peaceful invasions by alleged illegal migrants and the various narratives observed in the three countries analysed demonstrate how nativism and its exclusionary policies are a global phenomenon that manifests itself in similar ways in different contexts, despite its pretension of representing unique problems in different nations. The move towards eroding jus soli and to identify and disenfranchise ‘the other’, be it migrants or border and long-settled communities constitute solid trends in the decades after independence in both India and Myanmar and from the 1930s onwards in the Dominican Republic. The use of administrative violence in all three cases places individuals in a defenceless position that is often exacerbated by the lack of accessible, effective remedies (especially in Myanmar). The fact that such violence is overwhelmingly used against persons who face the worst conditions of social, economic and political vulnerability makes it a great human rights concern. The episodes of physical violence against minorities described in all three cases show an important parallel between discriminatory policies and violence. In this sense, the mass expulsion of Rohingya from Myanmar in 2017 are a cautionary tale as to what could happen in places like Assam if such policies are taken to the extreme. Conversely, the human rights associated with citizenship, statelessness and legal identity represent the standards upon which to base advocacy for the inclusion and protection of vulnerable individuals and minorities at the global level. 221