This blog is part of SLSA blog series ‘Exploring people’s experiences of ‘law’ through the lens of migration’ (Edited by Dr Simran Kalra and Dr Fanni Gyurko), which takes a socio-legal approach to migration related issues in a variety of contexts and jurisdictions. In this blog-series we shift the focus from the nation-state understanding of migration to the ‘migrant’s perspective’. This blog-series is an opportunity to exploring new, migration-related research agendas and perspectives.

Legal imitations  in emigrant infrastructure: Overseas Indian “Citizenship”

Dr Simran Kalra, Lecturer, University of Leicester (Law School)

In an increasingly globalised yet bordered world, the legal status and migrants’ bodies have become a site for contestations of national identities and memberships. Perceived as transgressors of borders and values, within political discourse immigrants evoke a multiplicity of deviant identities. Refugees, illegal migrants, asylum seekers, migrant labour – skilled and unskilled – discursively coalesce together into the politically charged term which has become the centre of electoral campaigns across both the global north and south. While much writing within socio-legal studies has focused on migrant’s inclusion into receiving countries, in this blog, I focus on migrants’ transnational relations and the relevance of ongoing relations with the sending state. Resisting euro-centric methodological biases in migration research, I argue that we need to examine migrant subjectivities not merely with an eye on laws and policies in the receiving context, but the relationship the migrant shares with the sending state. This is of course not a novel idea and is inspired by the works of transnational migration scholars such as Doleeka Raj, who argued for a study of emigrant infrastructure, instead of focusing on the receiving states’ laws and policies alone. Such a move aligns with Gillick Schiller’s approach to migration studies, recognising that immigrants continue to enjoy some ties and identity claims in to their countries of origin. Social and economic relations with the sending states continue to be generative for  migrants’ experiences in their new context and can have an impact on their immigration choices and other legal behaviour. Demonstrating the continuity of emigrants’ relations with the country of origin/ancestry, I focus on the innovative tool of the Overseas Citizen of India status (OCI) introduced by the government of India: a means of edifying the Indian diaspora relations with Bharat Mata (the Indian Motherland) by extending claims to nationality while maintaining India’s policy of single citizenship.

Under the OCI scheme, individuals who can demonstrate that they were Indian citizens but gave their status up to take on another citizenship, or individuals who are born to a parent who was an Indian citizen can apply for an OCI. Being granted an OCI gives an individual free movement rights, and the same financial rights as an NRI – non-resident Indian, with the exception that OCI holders cannot invest in agrarian property. Despite the nomenclature the status espouses, it in fact does not enable individuals to exercise the bouquet of citizenship rights: such as voting in elections or standing for these, while an NRI can. India in fact does not allow dual citizenship. As of January 2022, the Government of India had issued over 4 million OCI registration cards. However, recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of OCI status cancellations. According to some news reports, in 2024 the government cancelled 57 such cards: a number that was nearly half the cancellations made in the previous decade.

Imitation of state machinery and tools is common in legal plural contexts, where non-state actors seek to juridify state legal practices in an attempt to demonstrate legitimacy and in some cases to demonstrate an alignment of values with the state. Thus for instance, non-state disputing bodies such as Nari Adalats are known to sit over family disputes relating to domestic abuse and issue “official letters” to parties. Similar patterns were also noted in Bowen’s work on Shari’a Councils in England. Thus, entities outside the state may imitate state mechanics of dispensing order and enforcing legality outside the state’s legal framework. The OCI on the other hand, is a technique used by the state as it draws on its own legality to construct a significantly hollower legal status granting financial exemptions without any political rights. In fact, unless an individual was to surrender their existing Indian citizenship, they would be unable to secure an OCI registration. The rights secured to OCIs are determinable through statutory amendments unlike rights of citizens which are protected under the constitution. The OCI arguably contributes to a vocabulary of membership claims while continuing to maintain strict boundaries on political membership. Noujaks’ work on the Indian diaspora in the American context noted that the OCI registration contributed to identity claims and influenced remittance related behaviour. Additionally, he noted that the availability of the status led overseas Indians to naturalise and cement their transborder migration in the United States. Thus, the assurance that one could carry forward economic rights in the sending country despite naturalising in the receiving context, was seen to result in an uptake of naturalisation. Here, the contributing role of emigrant infrastructure to mobility choices is acutely evident. Drawing on this research, there is a case to be made for the study of such legal imitations in emigration research in other contexts.

In fact, the impact of the OCI may extend beyond the question of remittance and naturalisation. It may be argued that legal techniques that imitate citizenship statuses, serving the sending state’s agenda of self-aggrandizement through deterretorialised statehood, can influence more than just the perceptions of nationality and belonging among the diaspora. Such membership can influence diaspora community’s political engagement within the social context in the host country as well as the sending country. The OCI offers an opportunity to socio-legal scholars to examine how claims to “citizenship” statuses influence a variety of different kinds of legal behaviour: such as the engagement of diaspora communities in local political protests and campaigns around issues that originate in the sending context, and vice-versa. Such an engagement by the diaspora in fact points to a de-territorial political participation and a production of legality that is likely to draw on politics and legality of both the sending and receiving states. Engagement in translocal politics is likely to be influenced by increased identification by diaspora members as “citizens” under the OCI scheme. This may also be influenced by laws and foreign policy in the naturalised states which in turn may favour the powers that be in the emigrant state’s national politics. Thus, despite being shorn on political rights, OCI membership is in fact likely to result in an increase in participation in politics of the sending state: a claim that warrants interrogation.

Political parties in India draw on international popularity of national leaders, not just among their political counterparts but also within the emigrant community. In turn, the diaspora is invested in ensuring that its interests and values are represented by the leaders that they support. Here, it should be noted that the Indian diaspora community in England has witnessed recent religious tensions that resonate with religious politics in India. While inquiries into the disturbances are still ongoing, it will be fruitful to understand how reinforcement of nationality and extension of financial rights through such legal imitations of citizenship contributes towards political ideation, political participation and politicization of the local context among the diaspora. The relevance of citizenship imitating identities is made more evident in the recent case of a London based academic whose OCI status was revoked. It is reported that Prof. Nitasha Kaul was critical of the government’s policies. Evidently, politics and political action in emigrant context can thus influence the experience of freedom of speech in the immigrant context through citizenship identities and control of borders.

Developing such a research agenda in the United Kingdom is especially relevant given the sizable Indian diaspora here which has migrated over cohorts both prior to and since the introduction of the OCI scheme. Any such research will have to account for differences in migration periods, religious identities, local political membership and economic capacities.