displacement in place” (2008, 457) as the war prevented them from using various forms of “mobility-based” coping strategies (464). Because of this, Lubkemann argues that displacement should be redefined as “immobilization” generated by the involuntary “disruption of key life projects” (468, 471n8). Reconceptualizing statelessness as a form of forced displacement that takes place in situ broadens our understanding of the diverse forms that forced displacement can take and illustrates that one does not have to be forced to flee one’s home to suffer its effects. One can be physically rooted, yet displaced.
Third, the forced displacement in situ framework illuminates the myriad, yet subtle, ways in which democracies in nonconflict and noncrisis situations engage in forced displacement. Thus, whereas the focus within forced migration, conflict, and human rights studies has typically been upon those who are made to move (whether internally or externally) as a result of ethnic conflict, insurgency, persecution, foreign invasion, and other types of crises (Wood 1994, 612; Troeller 2003, 50),36 the comparative case analysis presented here reveals that democracies can—and do—engage in the forced displacement of peoples through legal, bureaucratic, and political means that have consequences just as portentous as the more commonly studied drivers of forced migration, such as environmental catastrophe, civil war, or persecution.
Methods
In order to address the aforementioned gaps in the human rights, forced migration, and (non)citizenship literatures, and to challenge the postnational claim that human rights have decoupled from citizenship, I conduct a comparative case study of statelessness in the Caribbean democracies of The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. I contend that the Caribbean stands as a valid testing ground for evaluating postnational claims about the decoupling of human rights from citizenship because “no other region” in the developing world “has had, for so long, so many liberal democratic polities” (Domínguez 1993, 2).
Freedom House, which scores states according to their practices in the areas of civil liberties and political rights, classifies all the countries in the Caribbean—with the exception of Cuba and Haiti—as “free” (2015, n. pag.). Caribbean states thus score well in the categories of political participation, freedom of speech and of the press, social and economic freedoms, and the rule of law, among other criteria. Specifically, The Bahamas earns the highest freedom scores possible (1 out of 7) in both civil liberties and political rights, while the Dominican Republic scores slightly lower, with a score of 3 and 2 (out of 7) in each category, respectively.
Beside the comparative “liberal/democratic” nature of the region, UNHCR is concerned about statelessness in the Caribbean, making the area a significant case study of this phenomenon from both a policy and an academic vantage. Statelessness is an issue in the region for several reasons. First, several countries do not grant citizenship automatically to children born of noncitizens on their soil if a parent is not a citizen, a permanent resident or legally present. Individuals are thus at risk of statelessness if they are unable to acquire the nationality of their parents and if the state of their birth has no provision in place to grant citizenship to stateless children. For example, and as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4, both The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic have stipulations in their laws that make it difficult to obtain citizenship at birth if one is born to noncitizen or “illegally” resident parents.
Second, few Caribbean states have ratified the two UN statelessness conventions and incorporated preventative measures against statelessness into their national legislation. For instance, only four Caribbean states (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago)37 have ratified the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (UN 1954), which delineates the rights and duties of a stateless person in a state party to the treaty; and only Jamaica has ratified the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which aims to prevent and reduce statelessness globally (UN 1961; UN 2016 Treaty Collection).38 Moreover, the majority of these states lack statelessness status determination (SSD) procedures, making it difficult to determine who is and who is not stateless in a systematic and transparent manner and to thereby furnish the stateless with a legal, protective status.
The problem of statelessness is of such significance in the Caribbean that UNHCR’s office for the Americas stated that one of its four strategic priorities for 2012 was to: “Prevent statelessness in the Caribbean by advocating for accession to international instruments, mapping the population concerned or at risk, providing technical and legal support and helping them with their registration and documentation” (UNHCR 2012e, 96). For 2013, this theme continued as “there will be a strong focus on the prevention and reduction of statelessness and other nationality issues, mainly through birth registration and documentation” (quoted in Belton 2015, 129). And, in 2015, following on the cusp of the successful Cartagena +30 process, the organization declared that one of its strategic priorities is to resolve statelessness in the region (2015c, n. pag.). Furthermore, UNHCR is expressly focused on “ensur[ing] access to a nationality for undocumented people of Haitian descent” (2012e, 97). This policy development is important because, as I explain in Chapters 3 and 4, in both The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, the two main destination sites for Haitian migrants (IOM 2013, 23), individuals of Haitian descent struggle to obtain, or retain, citizenship.
I chose The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic as case studies not only because they are democracies with a large presence of Haitian migrants and their children—and therefore an increased likelihood of containing populations who are at risk of statelessness—but also because of the notable differences that exist between them. From a demographic perspective, The Bahamas has a much smaller population at just over 350,000 persons (Government of The Bahamas 2012, 1), while the Dominican Republic has a population of around 9.4 million (Government of the Dominican Republic 2010a). The estimated tens of thousands of Haitians and their descendants in The Bahamas therefore make up a larger percentage of the Bahamian population than the estimated 380,000 in the Dominican Republic.39 Additionally, black Bahamians make up the majority of the population in The Bahamas (Government of The Bahamas 2012, 10) and thus share the same racial classification as most Haitian migrants. The DR, on the other hand, consists of a largely mixed population. These racial differences could play a role in mitigating or exacerbating any tensions toward Haitian migrants and their offspring, as well as affect how each community approaches the inclusion of noncitizen insiders.
Culturally, The Bahamas is a mixture of Baptist, Anglican and Catholic adherents, with the majority identifying as Baptist (Government of the Bahamas 2012, 11), while the DR is largely Catholic.40 The former was a British colony whose residents’ primary language is English, while the latter was a Spanish colony whose residents’ principal language is Spanish. From a legal and political perspective, The Bahamas and the DR are also distinct. The Bahamas is a common law country, while the DR observes continental legal praxis (“civil law”). Although both states are classified as democracies, The Bahamas operates under the Westminster-style parliamentary system and the DR is a republic headed by a presidency. Significant differences thus exist between the two cases, yet both states engage in exclusionary membership practices that primarily affect individuals of Haitian descent. By choosing to undertake fieldwork in two countries that exhibit significant demographic, cultural, and institutional differences—and that similarly generate forced displacement on their territories—I strengthen the external validity of my findings (Leedy and Ormrod 2005, 99–100).
I undertook fieldwork in The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic between 2009 and 2013 to examine how each state’s laws operated in practice with regard to the fulfillment of a human right to a nationality and to investigate how lack of formal membership in a state affects a person’s sense of place identity and ability to be a self-determining agent. The 2009 fieldwork in The Bahamas was exploratory in nature as questions of citizenship
