conventions, it also encourages them to establish SSD procedures, engage in community outreach regarding birth registration, and to restore nationality in cases where it has been arbitrarily removed, among other measures. In solidarity with the #IBelong Campaign, participating states also openly declare that they are committed to eradicating statelessness globally by 2024 (5).
While these are necessary actions to eradicate statelessness in the region (and elsewhere), there are some aspects of Chapter VI on statelessness within the Brazil Plan of Action that perhaps too closely associate statelessness with migratory movement. For example, the introductory paragraph to that Chapter says, “At the end of the next ten years, we hope to be in the position to affirm that the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean succeeded in … protect[ing] stateless persons arriving in their territories” (UNHCR 2014c, 17; italics added). It then later declares that states should “Adopt legal protection frameworks that guarantee the rights of stateless persons, in order to regulate issues such as their migratory status” (17; italics added). Finally, it calls on states to confirm the nationality of those who need it, noting that “cases of people who may require having their nationality confirmed frequently arise in situations of irregular migration or when people live in border areas” (17).
Although statelessness may arise in the context of migration, as I note earlier—and as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4—the majority of stateless persons are noncitizen insiders. They have not migrated from elsewhere. They may be the descendants of migrant parents or grandparents, but they are born and continue to reside in the countries of their birth, even though formally excluded. Associating a migratory trajectory to their predicament without clearly specifying that most stateless people are not migrants thus obfuscates the peculiar type of forced displacement they face and ignores the fact that for many of these persons, they know no other home.
Despite these promising international and regional activities around statelessness, the fulfillment of a human right to a nationality remains elusive globally. Exclusionary state practices of citizenship denial and deprivation continue to make people’s access to rights, freedoms, and protections as precarious as they were during Arendt’s time. In distinction to her time, however, the creation of stateless populations is not necessarily linked to crisis, conflict, or persecution. Thus the humanitarian element of their predicament is far from obvious to many. Furthermore, and in contrast to Arendt’s time, practices of citizenship deprivation and denial are not limited to authoritarian regimes. As I demonstrate in the next two chapters, even allegedly democratic states can act in arbitrary and discriminatory ways to forcibly displace people in situ.
PART II
Democracies as Engines of Forced Displacement
CHAPTER 3
The Bahamas: Neither Fish Nor Fowl
The social reality is that we have a very large number of persons in this society of Haitian extraction who have a very dubious status in The Bahamas; neither fish nor fowl. They don’t qualify for Bahamian citizenship constitutionally and conversely there are issues as to whether they have retained Haitian citizenship.
—former governmental official; personal interview
When we think about forced displacement, the Caribbean is not necessarily the first place that comes to mind, even though hurricanes and earthquakes do forcibly displace people within their island homes. Instead, we tend to think of the region as a prime tourist destination, a place where we can relax on the beach, play in the casinos, hike through tropical forests, visit wetlands, and an array of other such similar activities. “Paradise.” Yet for an untold number of people, this paradise has become an inferno. Far from a world of blurred boundaries, flexible citizenships, and denationalized rights, these stateless—or at risk of statelessness—populations find walls erected against their belonging at nearly every turn. Unable to secure any effective citizenship, their rights are highly precarious and they are displaced in situ.
While states have created an intricate web of domestic laws to distinguish who has membership in the polity, the right to belong formally to a state via citizenship is conditioned by other factors as well. Political practices, bureaucratic procedures, and discrimination also play their part in determining who belongs. The fulfillment of one’s human right to a nationality is thus far more complex in practice than simply determining to whom (jus sanguinis citizenship acquisition) and where one was born (jus soli citizenship acquisition). Through the case study of The Bahamas, this chapter illustrates how exclusionary citizenship laws, electoral politics, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and cronyism work together to displace Bahamian-born persons of Haitian descent into liminality or into the category of Haitian national without consent.
Situating the Case Study
The Bahamas is a chain of over seven hundred islands and cays off the coast of Florida. Its northern tip, located in the Abacos, reaches as far north as West Palm Beach, Florida, while its southern land mass extends as far as southern Cuba. Great Inagua, the most southerly island in the archipelago, lies less than eighty-five miles from Port-de-Paix, Haiti. Despite their geographical closeness, The Bahamas and Haiti could not be more distant in terms of economic, political, and human development. With a Gross National Income (GNI) of $21,280 per capita, The Bahamas is considered a high-income developing country (UNCTAD 2012, xii, xvi; World Bank 2013a). Haiti, on the other hand, is considered a “heavily indebted poor country” (UNCTAD 2012, xv), with a GNI of only $760 and with more than 75 percent of its population living in poverty (World Bank 2013b). Although The Bahamas’ unemployment rate is high at nearly 13 percent (Government of The Bahamas 2016, 17), it pales in comparison to the estimated 70 percent or higher unemployment rate in Haiti (Bergdahl 2012 n. pag.).
In comparison to the peaceful transitions of power in The Bahamas, Haiti has undergone numerous political challenges since the 1950s.1 From political violence and the dictatorships of the Duvaliers to coups d’état and environmental catastrophes—such as the 2010 earthquake that destabilized much of the country and left hundreds of thousands internally displaced—Haiti is far from the “Pearl of the Antilles” that it once was. Due to The Bahamas’ proximity both to Haiti and to the United States, its stronger economy, and the fact that it outranks Haiti in education, healthcare, sanitation, and other measures of the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index (UNDP 2013b),2 it is unsurprising that Haitians migrate to The Bahamas, whether temporarily or permanently, in search of a better life. In fact, and noted in Chapter 1, The Bahamas is one of the top three destinations for irregular Haitian migration (IOM 2013, 23).3
Although the precise number of irregular Haitian migrants in The Bahamas is unknown, hundreds, if not thousands of Haitians are speculated to migrate to the country each year through irregular or unauthorized channels. Many of these migrants remain in The Bahamas. According to the latest census numbers, 11 percent of the Bahamian population4 is made up of Haitian nationals5 (Government of The Bahamas 2012, 89 and 90, Table 9.0), but this figure does not capture the undocumented population,6 which is notoriously difficult to enumerate. Many of these migrants have children in The Bahamas, some of whom are at risk of becoming stateless.
The Legal Context
Bahamian nationality law is neutral in theory. Thus, while Dawn Marshall argued that The Bahamas Independence Order
