On Friday, Nov. 8, the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute invited attendees to learn about the intersectionality between birth registration and the rights of migrant families.
The speaker for this event was Allison Petrozziello, Ph.D., an assistant professor of global migration and inequality at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her presentation was based on her dissertation and upcoming book “Birth Registration as Bordering Practice.”
Petroziello began by explaining that her research in this dissertation focuses on the non-registration of birth, meaning millions of children do not have birth certificates. She said this issue “violates a child’s human right to a name and an identity.”
According to Petroziello, over 100 countries do not have effective civil registration systems. She also said that approximately 237 million children under five years old worldwide do not have birth certificates.
In these countries, she said that the lack of birth registration is also partly contributed to by other social inequalities such as sexism, racism, socioeconomic status, etc.
Her research looked at “exclusionary birth registration practices” around the world. She gained this information from recommendations made by the United Nations Human Rights mechanisms that have commented on this issue.
According to Petroziello, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have commented the least on this issue.
As of mid-2022, the committees within the UN Human Rights mechanisms have made 756 recommendations on improving birth registration, according to Petroziello.
Per the title of her dissertation, Petroziello believes that birth registration itself is bordering practice, meaning states use it as a way to exclude individuals it does not want to recognize or protect.
Petroziello outlined patterns of exclusion that would make birth registration a bordering practice. These include being a violation to a child’s right to an identity or nationality and being at least one of the types of bordering. These types are corporeal, social, discursive, spatial and temporal.
Corporeal bordering relates to how borders can be shown on the physical body. Birth registration is typically seen through a lens concerning children. Petroziello applied a feminist perspective to her research, which included pregnant people and the event of the birth itself. This allowed her to separate the act of birth and the act of registration and find links between them and the rights people have in relation to each.
In corporeal bordering, who gives birth to the child and where the child is born plays a role in where and how that birth is registered.
Petroziello then described territorial and mobile bordering, which are grouped together in the spatial bordering type.
Territorial bordering is the determination of physical borders to distinguish states. Mobile bordering refers to the regulation of human mobility.
In relation to birth registration, mobile bordering sets a limitation by determining a child’s nationality based on the parents’ statuses rather than where they are born.
Temporal bordering practices relate to the use of time. Petroziello said that this practice is used in tandem with spatial bordering.
“As more people are stopped en route … their precarious spacious legality means that their existence itself becomes bordered or temporally bound,” she said.
Petroziello said that the effects of temporal bordering can be felt after much time has passed since a border crossing. She said that these effects can span into the next generations as well.
To learn more about Petroziello’s research and work, read her biography from Toronto Metropolitan University’s website.
The Human Rights Institute will hold its next event on Tuesday, Nov. 12 in the Dodd Center for Human Rights’ Konover Auditorium & Dodd Lounge. As always, students from all majors are welcome to attend the free events.