no access to health care and in the lack of social and legal protection. Children are particularly vulnerable to negative sequelae of statelessness (van Waas & De Chickera, 2017): they cannot benefit from education (Policek, 2016), which in turn is translated into poor employment prospects, labour rights violations and ultimately poverty. Not having a national identity, makes children subjected to social stigma and discrimination. They are also vulnerable to trafficking, harassment, and violence (Policek, 2019). Stateless children, through no fault of their own, inherit circumstances that limit their potential and provide, at best, an uncertain future. They are born, live and, unless they can resolve their situation, die as almost invisible people (Policek, 2016).
Subsequently, the focus is on the ways that borders are experienced, and experienced differently, for different people (Balibar, 2002), stateless children in particular. The concluding segment of this contribution evidences the aspiration to claim citizenship and community for those who would be otherwise considered a redundant surplus (Mizruchi, 1983) and their plea to having margins without living at the margin.
Being Stateless
Under international law, a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law (Weissbrodt & Collins, 2006). Nationality, in this context, refers to a particular type of legal bond between an individual and a state. It is a type of formal membership that results in rights and duties on both sides. The individual, for instance, holds the right to reside in the territory and the state bears a corresponding duty of admission: the individual holds a duty of allegiance (which may include a duty to perform military and/or national service) and the state the right to exercise diplomatic protection on behalf of its nationals abroad (Aird et al., 2002). Where a person lacks any nationality, he or she does not enjoy the attached rights or duties, resulting in a lack of protection. A stateless person is seen and treated as a foreigner everywhere, as a national nowhere. Each state sets the conditions for acquisition and loss of its nationality—an act which is an expression of self-determination and a legitimate exercise of sovereignty—within the limits set by international law (including in relation to the avoidance of statelessness) (Ball et al., 2017). Whether an individual is considered to be a national by a particular state will therefore depend on that state’s domestic nationality law, including how the rules are interpreted and applied in practice (Bhabha, 2011). A person is left stateless either where he or she has failed to acquire any nationality to begin with (i.e. at birth), or where he or she has lost or been deprived of a nationality that was once held, without acquiring another. For the purposes of determining whether a person is stateless in accordance with international law, it is not relevant how or when he or she came to be without a nationality, only whether a nationality is held at the time the assessment is being made (Blitz, 2011).
Statelessness is mostly perceived as a mere technical legal issue (Doná & Veale, 2011), thus neglecting the devastating consequences to individuals, in particular children, who have no rights that naturally come with nationality. Even quantifying statelessness is a problematical task, because embedded in the definition of statelessness is the notion that a stateless person is not considered as a national under the operation of its law. This has been authoritatively interpreted as being both a question of fact and law. Consequently, there are individuals who would legally be eligible for a particular nationality, who are nonetheless not considered as nationals by the state, and whose statelessness is consequently hidden (Bhabha, 2009; 2011). Furthermore, often states may give insufficient priority to the implementation of measures to identify statelessness or accurately quantify it. Sometimes, there is even a deliberate strategy to deny the prevalence of statelessness by asserting that such persons are nationals of another country (Blitz, 2011). Even where data on statelessness can be collected, this does not always harvest comprehensive or reliable results, due to an incorrect interpretation of the definition (Bloom et al., 2017). Often, some such exercises have been limited in their scope, focusing only on one ethnic group (Chen, 2009) or geographical area of a country (Chatty & Mansour, 2011) and do not therefore produce a complete picture. To add to the complexity of collecting data on statelessness, many stateless persons do not see themselves as being stateless (Cody & Plan International, 2009). Even if they do, there is often reluctance to draw attention to this and therefore, data collection which relies on self-identification is not entirely accurate. Undocumented persons and those who are of undetermined nationality may be at risk of statelessness and indeed, some of them are likely to already be stateless (ENS, 2015). However, when such persons are in their own countries, they will almost always receive greater protection if confirmed to be nationals and consequently the stateless label can be counterproductive. Nevertheless, even in such situations, where the denial of documentation is long-lasting (even inter-generational), there would come a point when it is better to acknowledge such persons as stateless (Aird et al., 2002).
Not all countries in the world are able to report data on statelessness. Figures for different countries are compiled from different data sets—that use different methodologies—and do not always reveal the full picture. The data collated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is drawn from information produced by different actors, in different places, using different approaches—not all of which deliver the same level of reliability or produce readily-comparable data (ENS, 2015). Only persons exclusively under UNHCR’s statelessness protection mandate are reported in its statelessness statistics: UNHCR’s statistical reporting on statelessness excludes stateless persons who also fall within the protection mandates of other UN Agencies (at present, only the UN Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA), and those who also come under other UNHCR protection mandates (such as refugees or asylum seekers).
The identification of stateless persons and the collation of statistical information on statelessness, is relevant not only to assess states’ compliance with the statelessness treaties, but also with the more widely ratified human rights treaties. It is important to point out that in finding a person to be stateless, it is not relevant where in the world that person is. A child can be stateless in the country in which he or she was born, has always lived and has all family ties (Policek, 2016). Equally, a child can be stateless in a migratory context—for instance, losing nationality prior to, as a consequence of or at some point after crossing an international border (Blitz & Lynch, 2011). Statelessness rests on the fact of lacking any nationality, nothing more. Most stateless children have not moved from their homes and live in what can be described as their own country. Yet, due to the added vulnerability of stateless persons to discrimination, human rights abuse and even persecution, statelessness can also prompt forced displacement. Some stateless children, then, become internally displaced persons (IDPs), asylum seekers and refugees. Where a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law also falls within the scope of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, he or she is a stateless refugee. That someone can simultaneously be both stateless and a refugee, asylum seeker or IDP does not lessen their experience of statelessness, which should be taken into consideration when protecting and finding durable solutions for them.
With regard to the identification of stateless children, for the purposes of statistical reporting or otherwise, it is also important to note the distinction between statelessness and the situation of being undocumented, of undetermined nationality and/or at risk of statelessness. Universal birth registration and the provision of other life documents remains a significant challenge in many parts of the world (Cai, 2013). The lack of such documentation can mean that the child is stateless (e.g. where denied documentation because the state does not consider the person to be a national), but more often, such lack of documentation does not mean a lack of nationality, despite it being a significant barrier to proving nationality (De Genova, 2013). Indeed, children without documentation are at heightened risk of statelessness when compared with those who do have adequate documents, and some may become stateless in the future (e.g. where unable to establish or prove links to the state of nationality such that this state no longer considers the person as a national) (Goris et al., 2009).
In some countries, there is no commonly held definitive proof of nationality, therefore evidence of statelessness may be built up over multiple rejections
