ABSTRACT
Since 2014 in Uganda, 15,000 people defined or self-defined as Maragoli have not obtained a biometric identity card. Having migrated from Kenya in the 1950s, the Maragoli were not included on the constitutional list of so-called indigenous groups. Their quest for citizenship has prompted a ‘self-documentation’ effort, involving the production of an origin narrative, a self-census, the collection of historical archives, and booklets of official correspondence, to document their request for recognition of indigenousness. This contribution examines how identificatory policies in a context of bureaucratization and biometrization of legal identities have had a profound impact on the social fabric, on practices, and on representations of the collective identity, of self and citizenship. Paradoxically, through the materialization of identity technology, people are counted, identified, and categorized, but also negotiate their identity.
