Family register

A family register (also known as any of several variations, such as household register, family album, familienbuch, hukou, koseki, Hộ khẩu, etc.) is a civil registry used in many countries to track information of a genealogical or legal interest.

Often, official recognition of certain events or status may only be granted when such event or status is registered in the family registry— for example, in Japan, a marriage is legally effective when and only when such filing is recorded into the household register (known as a koseki). In other cases, the family register serves as a centralized repository for family legal events, such as births, deaths, marriages, and expatriations, as with the familienbuch in use in Germany and the livret de famille in France,[1] although it is not the sole source of official recognition for such events.

Use of government-sanctioned or administered family registers, while common in many European nations and in countries which use continental-style civil law (where the family or household is legally viewed as the fundamental unit of a nation), is nonetheless rare in English-speaking countries (for example, no such system is in use in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada or the United States).

Although the United States (for example) assigns most citizens and residents a social security number intended to be unique to the recipient and information regarding birth, death and work history (in the form of contributions to the social security system) is collected, the U.S. social security system has long been intentionally restricted in the scope of information collected and maintained regarding individuals where not directly related to social security benefits—as such, no information is centrally collected regarding marriage, citizenship status, parentage, or the like, in contrast to the German and Japanese family register systems.

Establishment of a more comprehensive personal information repository (along the lines of the German or Japanese systems) has been criticized by civil liberties advocates as subject to governmental or criminal abuse, while proponents cite the benefits of simplified access to vital information.

In Korea, use of the hojeok (similar to the Japanese household registry, written using identical Chinese characters) was repealed in 2005, in favor of a personal registry system.

The systems of household registers in China and Japan date back to the Tang Dynasty or Heian Period or earlier, both since the seventh century.

List of household register systems

East Asia

South East Asia

Vietnam

The hộ khẩu is nominally a household and residence registration system—hộ is the Sino-Vietnamese word for “household,” and khẩu, literally “mouth” in Sino-Vietnamese, means “household member.” The local authority issues to each household a "household registration book" or sổ hộ khẩu, in which the basic biographical information of each household member is recorded. The sổ hộ khẩu is the ultimate legal proof of residence in Vietnam. Together with the "citizen identification card" or giấy chứng minh nhân dân, the sổ hộ khẩu constitutes the most important legal identification document in VIetnam.

Modeled after the Chinese hukou system and originally used in urban areas only, hộ khẩu functioned as a way to manage urban growth and limit how many people moved, as well as who moved, in and out of the city.[3] Gradually the system became a universal method of control as its application expanded to the countryside. It helped the government keep track of not just movement but also births and deaths. And at certain point during the latter half of the twentieth century, a tight local surveillance system existed to ensure that people were sleeping at the address they had registered as their own. The joke was that the unintended effect of the whole system was the prevention of extramarital affairs.[4]

Even after substantial reforms in the 1990s, the hộ khẩu system is complicated and cumbersome. It defines four types of residence, KT1 through KT4. KT1 is the primary and permanent type of residence, and denotes a person’s primary residential address. If this person moves on a semi-permanent basis to another place within the same province or national municipality (within Saigon, for example), then he or she needs to register for a KT2 residential status at that new address. If this same move happens across provincial borders, then the person has to sign up for a KT3 registration. For migrant workers and students temporarily residing outside of their province or national municipality of permanent residence, they need to apply for a KT4 registration.[5] Navigating this matrix of regulations is tough. But the public security apparatus that manages the hộ khẩu system is also difficult to deal with, especially if one is a poor migrant worker with little to no formal education. Yet hộ khẩu remains absolutely crucial, especially for the poor. It is tied to access to welfare benefits, and, in the case of children, the right to attend public school.[6] For a migrant family in Saigon with no KT3 or KT4 registration, subsidised medical care, poverty assistance, and almost-free schooling are all out of reach.[7]

Thailand

http://integrity-legal.com/legal-blog/thailand-real-estate/thailand-house-registration-what-is-a-tabien-baan/

Indonesia

Kartu Keluarga (literally, Family Card) is a document in Indonesia that prove of residency which record relation and family member. Every family in Indonesia is required to own one of this document. This document records the identity of family's head and members. The document is kept by family's head, 'ketua RT' (head of neighborhood association) and 'desa' or 'kelurahan' office. The document is a provincial government document. Thus, it is not permitted to strike out, change, replace and add in the document. Every data changes have to be reported to village or 'kelurahan' office which will replace the old one with the updated one. Newcomers is not recorded in the document until they reported or have not a local residency status.

Changes in data have to be reported in 14 (fourteen) working days by family's head to 'desa' or 'kelurahan' office. Each report of changes must be submitted with the copy that held by family's head and 'ketua RT'. Changes in data are including birth, death and migration (of a member).

However, if a family moves to different 'desa' or 'kelurahan', the document must be revoked by 'desa' or 'kelurahan' office, which must be submitted with the copy that held by family's head and 'ketua RT'. The official in the prior location will produce Surat Keterangan Pindah (Note of Migration) which will be used to make the new Kartu Keluarga in the arrival by 'desa' or 'kelurahan' office.

Continental Europe

See also

References

  1. ↑ Robiac, Emma (1 May 2013). Jacquline Taylor, ed. In a Mother's Words (Print). Paris: EP. p. 17.
  2. ↑ Welcome to KWDI
  3. ↑ Hardy, Andrew. “Rules and Resources: Negotiating the Household Registration System in Vietnam under Reform.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16, no. 2 (October 2001): 187-212.
  4. ↑ Hardy, Andrew. “State Visions, Migrant Decisions: Population Movements since the End of the Vietnam War.” In Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society, edited by Hy V Luong. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
  5. ↑ Hardy, Andrew. “Rules and Resources: Negotiating the Household Registration System in Vietnam under Reform.” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 16, no. 2 (October 2001): 187-212.
  6. ↑ Abrami, Regina and Nolwen Henaff. “The City and the Countryside: Economy, State and Socialist Legacies in the Vietnamese Labour Market.” In Reach for the Dream: Challenges of Sustainable Development in Vietnam, edited by Melanie Beresford and Tran Ngoc Angie, 95-134. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2004.
  7. ↑ Hardy, Andrew. “State Visions, Migrant Decisions: Population Movements since the End of the Vietnam War.” In Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society, edited by Hy V Luong. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
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