Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Legal identity is universal, transcending national and socioeconomic borders. It is a central tenet of the UN's 2030 SDGs and cuts across over 70 development indicators, including birth registration. Evidentiary proof of citizenship is now a necessary tool to ensure access to health, education and welfare services. As Laurence Chandy, director of Data, Research and Policy at the
UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), recently stated: the prioritisation of documentation within global policy, including the transition from paper to digital identity systems, is 'one of the most under-appreciated revolutions in international development'.
During a period of intense global political-economic reconfiguration, inter-governmental organisations, multi-lateral and national aid agencies have problematised under-documentation. They have contributed significant levels of financial and technical assistance to governments to improve civil registries and ensure that all citizens everywhere have their paperwork. Over this time, formal identification has come to be considered a 'prerequisite for development in the modern world' (Gelb and Clark, 2013). It is now essential to development strategy planning and assumed in both policy and practice to constitute a common good for all beneficiaries.
With a focus on the Caribbean, this book highlights how identification practices as promulgated by the World Bank, United Nations (UN) and the Inter-American Development Bank can force the thorny question of nationality, unsettling long-established identities and entitlements. Notably, the book is the first to identify tensions in social policy over the use of social protection mechanisms promoting legal identity measures with disputes over race, national identity and belonging. The book illustrates how, while keen to follow the World Bank's lead in promoting a legal identity for all - not least to continue benefiting from external funding and support - the Dominican Republic balked at pressure to recognise the national status of persons of Haitian ancestry. It used social policy programmes and international donor funding to trace and register the national origins of persons of non-Dominican ancestry. This culminated in the now notorious 2013 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that retroactively stripped tens of thousands of persons of Haitian descent of their Dominican citizenship. Significantly, these measures not only affected undocumented or stateless populations - persons living at the fringes of citizenship - but also had a major impact on documented citizens already in possession of a state-issued birth certificate, national identity card and/or passport as Dominicans.
Synopsis
This book offers a critical perspective into social policy architectures primarily in relation to questions of race, national identity and belonging in the Americas. It is the first to identify a connection between the role of international actors in promoting the universal provision of legal identity in the Dominican Republic with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from populations of (largely, but not exclusively) Haitian descent. The book highlights the current gap in global policy that overlooks the possible alienating effects of social inclusion measures promulgated by international organisations, particularly in countries that discriminate against migrant-descended populations. It also supports concerns regarding the dangers of identity management, noting that as administrative systems improve, new insecurities and uncertainties can develop. Crucially, the book provides a cautionary tale over the rapid expansion of identification practices, offering a timely critique of global policy measures which aim to provide all people everywhere with a legal identity in the run-up to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Synopsis
Over the next decade, states will be carrying out large-scale registrations in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to provide more than one billion people around the world with evidentiary proof of their legal and, increasingly, digital existence. 'Legal Identity, Race and Belonging: From Citizen to Foreigner' is an important book which identifies a connection between the role of international actors, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, in promulgating the universal provision of legal identity and links these with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from (largely) Haitian-descended people born and living in the Dominican Republic. The book provides the definitive analysis of the events leading up to the controversial 2013 Constitutional Tribunal ruling that rendered the Dominican plaintiff Juliana Deguis Pierre stateless. Hayes de Kalaf illustrates how measures that purposely blocked people of Haitian ancestry from accessing their legal identity not only affected undocumented and stateless populations - persons living at the fringes of citizenship - but also had a major impact on documented people; Dominicans already in possession of a state-issued birth certificate, national identity card and/or passport. The book illustrates the complex and contradictory ways in which digital identity systems are experienced, thus challenging the assumption within current development policy that the provision of ID to everyone, everywhere will lead to the inclusion of all citizens.
Synopsis
This book provides a cautionary tale regarding legal identity practices as promulgated by the World Bank, UN and Inter-American Development Bank. It warns that policies encouraging the en masse registration of native-born migrant-descended populations can also force the thorny question of nationality, unsettling long-established identities and entitlements.