2021
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
3(2)
between Haitians (those born in Haiti) and Dominicans of Haitian descent.19 While
it is not a migration issue per se, concerns about unregulated migration have led
successive governments to use international donor-funded migration and identity
management systems in tandem to manufacture Dominico-Haitians as foreigners.
In response to Hayes de Kalaf’s provocation, I would argue ‘Una cosa no quita
la otra’; this is a both/and situation. You can encourage new modes of thinking
about identity and citizenship without ‘dehaitianising’, which is a confusing term
that risks downplaying the fact that deep-seated anti-Haitianism continues to fuel
state practices of citizenship deprivation and denial. Radically re-envisioning
Dominican identity in line with Lorgia García Peña’s scholarship does not
necessitate dehaitianising — whatever is meant by the term — but rather making
space for those of Haitian heritage to be both/and.20 Here is where the confusion
borders on becoming counterproductive. Hayes de Kalaf says her call to
dehaitianise comes as a way to ‘distance our approach away from an anti-Haitian,
racist ideology that reinforces the perverse belief that persons of Haitian descent
are somehow incompatible with the Dominican nation specifically because of their
Black, African ancestry’.21 Of course, we should not reinforce anti-Haitian racism,
but is it possible to challenge anti-Haitian racism without naming it? If antiHaitianism is what destabilises the citizenship system, as Aber and Small claim,22
is it necessary to dehaitianise in order to (re)contextualise the case? If anti-Haitian
racism remains a motivating political ideology, then our task as scholars and
advocates is not to dehaitianise but to do both the work of examining the
technologies which perpetuate systemic racism while also continuing to name the
underlying ideology.23
There are opportunities to continue interrogating the colonial legacies inherent
in identification systems that Legal Identity recognises are at work in the
Dominican Republic and across Latin America and the Caribbean.24 How can our
research align with efforts to decolonise these systems? Future scholarship can
help us think this through, following Malak Benslama’s recent call for
decolonising statelessness and citizenship studies.25 Those interested in these
questions in the Dominican Republic may wish to consult Ochy Curiel’s book,
which takes a historical anthropological and decolonial approach to examining the
lead-up to the Sentencia (in Spanish only).26
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Bridget Wooding, ‘Supra-National Jurisprudence: Necessary but Insufficient to Contest
Statelessness in the Dominican Republic’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds),
Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press
2021).
Lorgia García-Peña, The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of
Contradiction (Duke University Press 2016) cited by Hayes de Kalaf (n 1) 29.
Hayes de Kalaf (n 1) 12.
Shaina Aber and Mary Small, ‘Citizen or Subordinate: Permutations of Belonging in the
United States and the Dominican Republic’ (2013) 1 Journal on Migration and Human
Security 8, quoted in Hayes de Kalaf (n 1) 30.
Samuel Martínez and Bridget Wooding, ‘Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic: A BioPolitical Spin’ (2017) 15 Migración y Desarrollo 95; E Tendayi Achiume, Report of the
Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance (United Nations 2020) 2/25 <https://undocs.org/A/75/590>.
Hayes de Kalaf (n 1) 15, 102.
Malak Benslama-Dabdoub, ‘Colonial Legacies in Syrian Nationality Law and the Risk of
Statelessness’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 6, 32.
Ochy Curiel, Un Golpe de Estado. La Sentencia 168–13. Continuidades y Discontinuidades
Del Racismo En República Dominicana (En la frontera / La Imprenta Editores SA 2021).
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