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About this talk: Contemporary politics of ethnonationalism and democratic decline increasingly engage in citizenship dispossession targeting not just migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, but a country's own citizens. This talk develops the concept of irregularization to theorize this phenomenon, focusing on India as its primary site of inquiry. Through insidious legal practices — pervasive construction of suspicion via evidentiary demands structurally impossible to satisfy, and a regime of judicial silence that withholds legal recognition and creates vacuums in which dispossession proceeds without accountability — states render citizenship inoperable rather than formally revoked. Drawing on extensive analysis of legal orders and fieldwork, the talk gives an account of the legal techniques through which this form of citizenship deprivation is produced and sustained. The argument speaks to broader questions about how democratic erosion transforms legal institutions into weapons of exclusion. About the speaker: Dr Mohsin Alam Bhat is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London, working on constitutional law, minority rights, and the law of democracy. His recent work focuses on citizenship, including an extensive empirical and legal report on India's denationalization trials, Unmaking Citizens: The Architecture of Rights Violations and Exclusion in India's Citizenship Trials (2025), and several articles on questions of discrimination and democratic citizenship in journals including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Antipode, Social and Legal Studies, and the Asian Journal of Law and Society. He is the co-founder of Parichay, a legal aid project supporting persons facing denationalisation in India. The seminar will be followed by drinks in the hall, registration is not required.
Add to Calendar 11-11-2026 17:00 11-11-2026 18:00 Europe/London Dispossessing citizenship: law, suspicion, and silence in India's denationalization politics
About this talk: Contemporary politics of ethnonationalism and democratic decline increasingly engage in citizenship dispossession targeting not just migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, but a country's own citizens. This talk develops the concept of irregularization to theorize this phenomenon, focusing on India as its primary site of inquiry. Through insidious legal practices — pervasive construction of suspicion via evidentiary demands structurally impossible to satisfy, and a regime of judicial silence that withholds legal recognition and creates vacuums in which dispossession proceeds without accountability — states render citizenship inoperable rather than formally revoked. Drawing on extensive analysis of legal orders and fieldwork, the talk gives an account of the legal techniques through which this form of citizenship deprivation is produced and sustained. The argument speaks to broader questions about how democratic erosion transforms legal institutions into weapons of exclusion. About the speaker: Dr Mohsin Alam Bhat is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London, working on constitutional law, minority rights, and the law of democracy. His recent work focuses on citizenship, including an extensive empirical and legal report on India's denationalization trials, Unmaking Citizens: The Architecture of Rights Violations and Exclusion in India's Citizenship Trials (2025), and several articles on questions of discrimination and democratic citizenship in journals including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Antipode, Social and Legal Studies, and the Asian Journal of Law and Society. He is the co-founder of Parichay, a legal aid project supporting persons facing denationalisation in India. The seminar will be followed by drinks in the hall, registration is not required.

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