Seminar series Boundaries of membership: political exclusion, ethnicity, and uneven access to civil registration Add to calendar 2025-05-15 12:00 2025-05-15 13:00 Europe/Rome Boundaries of membership: political exclusion, ethnicity, and uneven access to civil registration Sala Triaria Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates May 15 2025 12:00 - 13:00 CEST Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia Organised by Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies GGP: Global Governance Programme GlobalCit: Global Citzenship Observatory Join Imke Harbers to explore how ethnicity influences access to civil registration and the political exclusion of undocumented populations through new cross-country data analysis. Although undocumented persons are often thought of as migrants or non-citizens, globally, one in seven people have not had their birth registered and therefore lack official documents to prove their legal identity. The share of people holding documents deemed insufficient to establish citizenship is even higher. If access to civil registration is uneven, who is left out? This paper examines how ethnicity shapes access to civil registration. Using an original dataset that captures the political status of ethnic groups identified in the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), the analysis demonstrates that group membership influences the likelihood of registration across countries, even when controlling for socio-economic variables and other risk factors. Moreover, the findings indicate that registration rates are lower among politically excluded groups, highlighting the strategic role of identity documents as tools for ‘member-making.’