The Bangladeshi migrant has been constructed as an ‘infiltrator’ in India, presented as a threat to ‘national security’ and used as a conduit to make citizenship ‘fool-proof’. This paper examines how the securitisation of migration as ‘infiltration’ is interpreted by legal and penal street-level bureaucrats, theorising citizenship itself as a bordering practice, operating through diffused mechanisms that create and maintain hierarchies of belonging. Drawing on fieldwork at a metropolitan courtroom in Mumbai where nationality determination trials are conducted – encompassing interviews with those accused of being ‘infiltrators’, state officials, case documents and courtroom observations – the analysis uncovers how the local citizenship apparatus legally transforms citizens into migrants. This renders citizenship contingent – both conditional on factors like judicial temperament, bureaucratic discretion and financial resources – as well as unpredictable in its outcomes. By exposing gaps in everyday citizenship functioning, the study explores the deeper problem with how citizenship must be ‘proved’ in India.

Maggie Paul, Citizenship as bordering practice: the penal-legal mediation of migration as ‘infiltration’ in India, Citizenship Studies, 2026.