State Practices and Exercising citizenship: Encounters between People and Bureaucracy in Bolivia

This text analyses the state practices that limit and expand the experience of citizenship, and the strategies used by people in order to exercise their rights. The work is based on an ethnographic study that looks at the encounters between Bolivian population and state bureaucracy. The study looks at those organs of the State responsible for the registration of identity of individuals (identity cards), as well as the assignation of legal status to associations (legal entity). The study explores the meanings given to citizenship in the space that divides de jure equality from de facto equality, which are experienced through day-to-day encounters with state bureaucracy.