The paper looks at a number of video installations by Indian artists Navjot Altaf and Raqs Media Collective, which concentrate on the problematic hospitality of nation states and particularly of global cities like Mumbai and Delhi. Focusing largely on the often overlapping figures of ‘the foreigner’ and ‘the urban poor’ the art works bring to our attention disadvantaged urban residents who are precariously positioned within the city, caught in the dis-locating effects of redevelopment plans and ethnic re-founding of the nation. The discussion will address the problems arising from the way in which human life is inscribed within the juridical and political order of the nation-state through the figure of the citizen. This will lead into a critical reading of national citizenship, examining its relation to human rights and the production of marginalized subjectivities. Furthermore, the artworks will help us to highlight the responsibilities of urban spatial politics, carried out in the name of development and progress in these discriminating dynamics. It looks in particular at how the reinforcement of policies on the proper use of the land have the effect of depriving large numbers of city inhabitants of basic rights and turning areas of the city into zones of indeterminacy with economic logics, forms of sociality and law challenging the ordering role of the state. Cities emerge as heterogeneous, conflicting spaces, where for many ‘trespassing’ becomes an everyday practice and form of survival.