This is a common problem in Asia. One of my friends works on helping disadvantaged communities in India get identified (get government identification, get voter IDs, get their actions tracked) and another works on making sure their homes are tracked on government services.
Governments only serve the people they know about. The standard of service for these people increases substantially when they're no longer invisible. They get a ration shop, voter booths, that sort of thing.
Not too sure about it being just illegal immigrants. Many of the people who migrate across states are also "invisible" and do not possess identification. This situation is improving, but arguably not by much.
The relationship with government is very different from the western model in many countries. People just live and die without much interference from government, in some rural places people don't even know their age. It's hard to imagine for people living in industrialized and urbanized places, but many people still live that way worldwide.
Westerners think the Chinese murdered female babies, but I remember reading (citation needed?) that the female babies mostly end up being undocumented.
It was the same in the US until very recently. The idea that we would all be tracked from birth to death was a horror to most people, and a sign of the apocalypse to a lot of Christians.
I think the disappearance (and formalization) of home births started the movement in the other direction, along with Social Security cards inevitably being used as identification numbers. Anti-immigration drives during the Clinton administration and after 9/11 (both resulting in the RealID push) were the nails in the coffin.
edit: my grandmother didn't even know her birth name until she was middle-aged. She just got ID with the name she had always gone by, because birth documentation wasn't required.
My mom was reluctant to get me a Social Security card because she thought it would increase my risk of being drafted. (In the U.S., birth records are handled at the state level, or for some purposes county level, while the military draft is handled at the federal level.) Of course, if I hadn't had one, there are tons of things that I wouldn't have been able to do (like official employment, banking, and credit, to start with).
Military conscription is a huge impetus for population registration and tracking. In the U.S. there hasn't been conscription since before I was born, but there's still an agency that notionally registers military-aged men and their whereabouts, with intermittent halfheartedness and minimal enforcement. (My recollection is that all of the enforcement actions for the past few decades have been against men who wrote open letters refusing to register, or something, as opposed to those who simply forgot or declined to register.)
James Scott has written extensively about how many people in history didn't want to be tracked by (or "legible" to) the state, because this would subject them to conscription and taxation. The idea that conscription or taxation are good and that you should want to be subject to them (either because of a theory of political legitimacy or because of benefits that they will personally bring you or your neighbors) is kind of a historical anomaly, although very widespread today.
I do think the idea that you would be better off if you and the state didn't interact than if you did feels most plausible in a rural farming environment, and least plausible in a city in an industrialized society -- not that many people still don't wish to be, or think about being, free of the state, but that it's obviously taken up such an enormous role in life that it feels like a huge sacrifice to be totally invisible to it. A big trend over time all around the world, especially following the industrial revolution, has been higher taxes and more government services. Even if you don't personally feel this was a good trade-off, a whole lot of parts of life would "break" for you if you were outside of it.
It's probably poverty and the fact that the government bureaucracy doesn't do an extensive job of tracking its citizens. It's possibly the same in Africa. It just so happens that I know about Asia.
Western countries are unbelievably wealthy and they have crazy effective information infrastructure. I suspect this is not common across the globe. Many people may barely have a birth certificate.
In many of these countries, the infrastructure is like the UK pre-Domesday-Book. There may be people living in a village that is unmarked on the maps.
For the people my friends last worked with, they were in a fishing shanty town in the Indian state of Karnataka that was unnamed (officially) until recently. Strange, eh? People just agglomerate somewhere without incorporating a municipality or anything because they have to survive.
Generally speaking the people who are not tracked are part of marginalized groups (which is often why they weren't trying to engage in the first place and why government wanted nothing to do with them) that tend to have an on again off again somewhat abusive relationship with government. By signing up you might get healthcare today but the contents of your row in the database could get you screwed if political winds shift (having the wrong religion or ethnicity on your official government records is a much bigger liability outside the west).
That's kind of what I was wondering. I can't imagine a person in modern governments being unknown unless they had no interest in being known, is that out of ignorance of what the government is offering them or because the tradeoffs arnt worth it to them?
At least in India it's because interacting with the government is a huge pain in the ass. You don't do it unless you have to. It just so happens that it's rapidly becoming the case that you do have to.
India's lowest tax bracket is zero-taxed. That's up to 20k INR (270 USD) monthly. You don't have to file if you have zero tax (unless you meet one of the other weird conditions that is aimed at people who make lots of money in 'weird' ways - abroad, cap gains, etc.). In practice, these people don't have to file.
The increased responsibilities are:
* They're tied to the national ID which has biometrics and all that shite
* If they make more than the exemption (which can happen occasionally) they have to file now. In practice, they'll just dodge it since they work 'informally' (i.e. the guy who goes out fishing and then has his wife sell at the local market isn't having income deducted by an 'employer')
* I don't recall particularly, but I think they also stick you with a religion and an ethnicity field (for affirmative action stuff). Not sure about this so check. This one makes me nervous if it's real.
But it's just so much more beneficial to be known to exist. If the government simply doesn't know, it won't particularly look. Some bureaucrat in the big city will look at the blank spot and put a desal plant there and then they'll come evict you.
At least if you are known to exist, you can fight the eviction temporarily or get some money.
This is a common problem in poor nations and probably worse in the larger ones. Poor nations simply cannot afford the infrastructure necessary to maintain a deep bureaucracy that tracks everything and everyone. In addition, some of the people living there are not educated and too poor to bother with interacting with the government for a wide variety of reasons.
Indonesia in particular is a HUGE nation and makes Mexico look wealthy. Over 270 mil people, on thousands of islands, stretching across thousands of miles. Personally, I'm amazed it's been able to hold itself together over the decades.
Well, technically it hasn't, since Timor-Leste split off in 2002. And there have been and remain separatist tendencies of various strengths in Papua, Aceh, Maluku, etc.
What has held Indonesia together is the overwhelming dominance of the Javanese, through a combination of (comparative) economic might, weight of numbers, repression and neglect of the rest.
One strange thing (to me) about Indonesian ID cards is that they have a compulsory field "Religion" where one must choose one of six possible religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If one is without religion or follows another religion he must still pick one of those 6.
Another strange thing (to me) is the complex dependency between institutions. In order to be able to apply for various things like documents, benefits, scholarship, school admission etc. one needs approval from head of family then head of the village, then letter from the police and so on. Be on bad terms with any of these (individuals) and some government services are unavailable to you. I heard a story from and Indonesian about how he could not go to university because the head of the village didn't want to give him the letter that he needed to apply to university.
Also marriage between members of different religions is not possible. So one person must convert to the other's religion before they can be married.
A "religion" field in government documents is fairly common. In many countries, some tax revenues are given to religious institutions proportional to the number of citizens that belong to that religion.
This is correct. The Church Tax is only collected if you belong to denominations that collect it. The state takes a cut on the collection, so Church Tax indirectly benefits other citizens.
On the other hand, it's pretty unsettling to be asked your religion when you register your address for the first time. The church in your home country can sometimes onboard you without your knowledge, and you end up paying the church tax. This happened to French and Italian friends.
I believe the reason why Indonesia does not list atheism in government forms is because in most Shariah influenced jurisdictions, atheism would amount to apostasy and hence be deemed a crime.
It's not strange. Many religions contain an absolute prohibition against denying your faith. It prevents any true believers in those religions from having government documents.
> "Religion" where one must choose one of six possible religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If one is without religion or follows another religion he must still pick one of those 6.
It always felt, to me, like the Dutch colonizers culturally transferred their concept of pillarisation[1] to Indonesian society.
The reason why religion is probably Mandatory(tm) is because Indonesia is an islamic country. You see similar behavior in other islamic countries in the middle east and their documents.
> Also marriage between members of different religions is not possible.
You can. But it's hard. So basically the main requirement of marriage is it must be performed in a religious ceremony. You cannot have a pure civil marriage in Indonesia. So the thing is.... the clerics, the priests are not fond of mixed-marriages. But there are marriages between Buddhist and Catholic, Christian and Catholic, Muslim and Christian. I'm an Indonesian.
Also, there is a loop-hole. You get married overseas and register it in an Indonesian embassy.
India also demands government Id for covid vaccination. No Id, no vaccine. ( These days there is a desperate shortage of vaccines for everyone, which is another story for another time)
49 comments
[ 1688 ms ] story [ 2276 ms ] threadGovernments only serve the people they know about. The standard of service for these people increases substantially when they're no longer invisible. They get a ration shop, voter booths, that sort of thing.
Westerners think the Chinese murdered female babies, but I remember reading (citation needed?) that the female babies mostly end up being undocumented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China
I think the disappearance (and formalization) of home births started the movement in the other direction, along with Social Security cards inevitably being used as identification numbers. Anti-immigration drives during the Clinton administration and after 9/11 (both resulting in the RealID push) were the nails in the coffin.
edit: my grandmother didn't even know her birth name until she was middle-aged. She just got ID with the name she had always gone by, because birth documentation wasn't required.
Military conscription is a huge impetus for population registration and tracking. In the U.S. there hasn't been conscription since before I was born, but there's still an agency that notionally registers military-aged men and their whereabouts, with intermittent halfheartedness and minimal enforcement. (My recollection is that all of the enforcement actions for the past few decades have been against men who wrote open letters refusing to register, or something, as opposed to those who simply forgot or declined to register.)
James Scott has written extensively about how many people in history didn't want to be tracked by (or "legible" to) the state, because this would subject them to conscription and taxation. The idea that conscription or taxation are good and that you should want to be subject to them (either because of a theory of political legitimacy or because of benefits that they will personally bring you or your neighbors) is kind of a historical anomaly, although very widespread today.
I do think the idea that you would be better off if you and the state didn't interact than if you did feels most plausible in a rural farming environment, and least plausible in a city in an industrialized society -- not that many people still don't wish to be, or think about being, free of the state, but that it's obviously taken up such an enormous role in life that it feels like a huge sacrifice to be totally invisible to it. A big trend over time all around the world, especially following the industrial revolution, has been higher taxes and more government services. Even if you don't personally feel this was a good trade-off, a whole lot of parts of life would "break" for you if you were outside of it.
Western countries are unbelievably wealthy and they have crazy effective information infrastructure. I suspect this is not common across the globe. Many people may barely have a birth certificate.
In many of these countries, the infrastructure is like the UK pre-Domesday-Book. There may be people living in a village that is unmarked on the maps.
For the people my friends last worked with, they were in a fishing shanty town in the Indian state of Karnataka that was unnamed (officially) until recently. Strange, eh? People just agglomerate somewhere without incorporating a municipality or anything because they have to survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koteka
TL;DR: The government objected to Papuan tribesmen wearing only penis gourds and airdropped a bunch of pants for them, with predictable results.
The increased responsibilities are:
* They're tied to the national ID which has biometrics and all that shite
* If they make more than the exemption (which can happen occasionally) they have to file now. In practice, they'll just dodge it since they work 'informally' (i.e. the guy who goes out fishing and then has his wife sell at the local market isn't having income deducted by an 'employer')
* I don't recall particularly, but I think they also stick you with a religion and an ethnicity field (for affirmative action stuff). Not sure about this so check. This one makes me nervous if it's real.
But it's just so much more beneficial to be known to exist. If the government simply doesn't know, it won't particularly look. Some bureaucrat in the big city will look at the blank spot and put a desal plant there and then they'll come evict you.
At least if you are known to exist, you can fight the eviction temporarily or get some money.
Indonesia in particular is a HUGE nation and makes Mexico look wealthy. Over 270 mil people, on thousands of islands, stretching across thousands of miles. Personally, I'm amazed it's been able to hold itself together over the decades.
What has held Indonesia together is the overwhelming dominance of the Javanese, through a combination of (comparative) economic might, weight of numbers, repression and neglect of the rest.
Another strange thing (to me) is the complex dependency between institutions. In order to be able to apply for various things like documents, benefits, scholarship, school admission etc. one needs approval from head of family then head of the village, then letter from the police and so on. Be on bad terms with any of these (individuals) and some government services are unavailable to you. I heard a story from and Indonesian about how he could not go to university because the head of the village didn't want to give him the letter that he needed to apply to university.
Also marriage between members of different religions is not possible. So one person must convert to the other's religion before they can be married.
But afaik in Germany if you’re officially non-religious, or your declared religion is not party to the church tax system, you just don’t get taxed.
On the other hand, it's pretty unsettling to be asked your religion when you register your address for the first time. The church in your home country can sometimes onboard you without your knowledge, and you end up paying the church tax. This happened to French and Italian friends.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_athei...
I acknowledge that the data is useful for understanding communities. But the question should be reframed to not reinforce racism.
Ah, a strongly typed country!
That's like listing cynicism/stoicism/utilitarianism/or-whatever-else-ism as a religion.
It's fully intentional.
It always felt, to me, like the Dutch colonizers culturally transferred their concept of pillarisation[1] to Indonesian society.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation
You can. But it's hard. So basically the main requirement of marriage is it must be performed in a religious ceremony. You cannot have a pure civil marriage in Indonesia. So the thing is.... the clerics, the priests are not fond of mixed-marriages. But there are marriages between Buddhist and Catholic, Christian and Catholic, Muslim and Christian. I'm an Indonesian.
Also, there is a loop-hole. You get married overseas and register it in an Indonesian embassy.