Publication – CITIZEN GAP

Universal IDs, selective barriers: ethnic variation in demand for IDs in India

Banas, G. (2026). Universal IDs, selective barriers: ethnic variation in demand for IDs in India. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2026.2728607

Universal identity documents are arguably essential for all citizens, yet demand for state recognition may vary across social groups. As theories of legibility predict that discriminated minorities will seek to evade the state’s gaze, low ID-coverage among marginalised groups is often attributed to citizen mistrust. However, ID-ownership rates cannot disentangle supply and demand. Focusing on Indian Muslims, I utilise World Bank’s India State Survey data to distinguish citizens’ applications for the voter ID and Aadhaar from the state’s capacity to deliver these documents. Using logistic regression models with controls for socioeconomic status and state-fixed effects, I find a behavioural paradox. Indian Muslims are significantly more likely to apply for both documents than not only non-Muslims, but also non-Muslim marginalised groups such as Scheduled Castes and Tribes – a finding that is theoretically unexpected given evidence of systematic under-provision of public goods to Muslim-dominated areas. However, conditional on application, Muslims are less likely to successfully procure a voter ID. By contrast, no such penalty exists for the Aadhaar. These findings challenge narratives of state evasion, suggesting that exclusion may persist not due to a lack of citizen demand, but due to selective barriers that block citizens’ active efforts for political inclusion.

Going the Last Mile: How Social Pensions Make Marginalized Elders Legible and Build the State’s Informational Capacity

Harbers, I., & Hunter, W. (2025). Going the Last Mile: How Social Pensions Make Marginalized Elders Legible and Build the State’s Informational Capacity. Comparative Political Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140251328023

The state’s reach across societal groups is often uneven. Lacking documents that provide official proof of age and identity, many elderly people in countries of the Global South have long resided in the blind spot of states, especially if they are poor, indigenous, live in rural areas, and have labored outside the formal sector. How can states go the last mile and build informational capacity by incorporating particularly marginalized groups? What induces marginalized elders to register their births decades after the fact? Based on cross-national analyses, case studies of Mexico and Bolivia, and a series of difference-in-difference designs, we show that bureaucratic social welfare policies can incentivize identity documentation among hard-to-reach populations. The rollout of social pensions prompted previously unregistered elders to finally obtain birth registration and certification, making invisible elders legible and enhancing the informational capacity of the state.

Legal identity at the margins: the impact of violent conflict on birth registration in India

Dhiman, A., & Harbers, I. (2023). Legal identity at the margins: the impact of violent conflict on birth registration in India. Citizenship Studies, 27(7), 779–798. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2024.2321714

In India, armed groups characterised by a diversity of ideologies and aims have emerged and persisted even in the presence of a fairly strong state. These groups often operate in areas that have long suffered from state neglect. We examine how violent conflict influences patterns of birth registration. State-recognised documents are crucial for establishing legal identity, and accessing citizenship rights. We draw on the 2015–16 National Family and Health Survey to measure civil registration, community and household characteristics. Our conflict data come from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which we leverage to describe community exposure to organised violence. Our statistical analysis shows that the likelihood that a child is in possession of a birth certificate is significantly lower in areas affected by violent conflict, even when controlling for other individual and social characteristics associated with marginalisation.

The subnational electoral coercion in India (SECI) data set, 1985–2015

Richetta, C., Harbers, I., & van Wingerden, E. (2023). The subnational electoral coercion in India (SECI) data set, 1985–2015. Electoral Studies, 85, 102662.

This research note introduces the Subnational Electoral Coercion in India (SECI) Data Set, which provides comprehensive data on electoral coercion in 186 Indian Vidhan Sabha elections between 1985 and 2015. SECI draws on news reports to capture instances of electoral coercion, including coercive fraud, election boycotts by non-state armed groups, and deaths resulting from electoral violence at the assembly constituency level. SECI differs from existing data in its focus on subnational elections, its temporal coverage and its broad definition of electoral coercion, thus opening up new directions for research on electoral politics across Indian states.

Permanent Membership: The Prohibition of Citizenship Renunciation

Harbers, I., & Steele, A. (2023). Permanent Membership: The Prohibition of Citizenship Renunciation. International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231165508

Dual citizenship is often seen as an indication that states are adopting more open membership policies. In some cases, however, dual citizenship is imposed because states lay claim to populations beyond their borders, and prohibit the renunciation of citizenship. This research note presents new data to describe which countries prohibit renunciation. First, we find that some states prohibit renunciation in administrative practice, even though national legal frameworks formally allow renunciation. Roughly one in five states — 38 total — prohibits citizenship renunciation in de facto or de jure terms. Second, prohibitions are regionally clustered in Latin America and the Caribbean (13 countries) and the Middle East and North Africa region (11 countries). Third, among the countries that prohibit renunciation, democracies and authoritarian regimes are fairly balanced (17 democracies vs. 21 autocracies). Fourth, democracies are more likely to formally prohibit renunciation, while autocracies also rely on de facto prohibition through administrative barriers, arbitrary procedures, or a failure to process requests. We connect citizenship prohibitions to diaspora governance, discuss its implications for citizens, and propose avenues for further research.

Accessing Citizenship: Patterns of Civil Registration and Insurgent Conflict in India

Dhiman, A. & Harbers, I. (2023) Accessing Citizenship: Patterns of Civil Registration and Insurgent Conflict in India. Blog post on the Armed Groups and International Law blog: https://www.armedgroups-internationallaw.org/2023/03/22/accessing-citizenship-patterns-of-civil-registration-and-insurgent-conflict-in-india/.

Citizenship grants access to the rights enjoyed by all members of the political community of a given state. To claim these rights, citizens must be able to provide evidence of membership based on birth place and/or parentage. Yet, according to recent World Bank estimates, about 850 million people lack official documents such as birth certificates, ID cards or passports that prove their legal identity. The absence of state-recognised documents can brand individuals as non-citizens or outsiders. For millions of people, as Wendy Hunter and a recent volume edited by Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey Kingston show, the threat to the enjoyment of citizenship rights derives not from their legal status, but from their inability to demonstrate this status. Individuals without legal identity documents often come from marginalised communities or live in zones of limited state presence. This creates a vicious cycle as vulnerable individuals are rendered even more vulnerable by their lack state-recognised documents.

Birth certificates are key to establishing legal identity, including claims of citizenship, and proof of parentage. In a recent working paper, we examine how armed conflict affects birth registration in India.^[1] UNICEF estimates that as of 2016, around 20% of children under the age of five have not been registered with Indian civil authorities, suggesting that 2.7 million children in this age group do not possess birth certificates. Unregistered children often live in poor households and belong to marginalised communities. The South Asia Terrorism Portal identifies 76 active insurgent groups in India and an average of 2100 conflict-related fatalities per year between 2000-2022. Insurgent conflict tends to be concentrated in peripheral areas or along India’s international borders, such as the Northeast of the country and in Jammu & Kashmir, and in tribal areas that have long suffered from state neglect. In our paper, we examine patterns of birth registration in these areas, and find that armed conflict increases the risk that children remain unregistered beyond factors associated with social marginalisation previously identified in the literature.

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