of some, while depriving others of this same freedom (Varsanyi, 2008). Following from these differential experiences, Balibar (2002) highlights how the function of the border is vigorously to differentiate between individuals in terms of social class. This is to say that the fundamental function of the border is to distinguish between people and to produce differential social placements and experiences. For the rich person from the rich country, the border becomes a symbolic reaffirmation of a surplus of rights, while for a poor person from a poor country the border is a solid barrier, one which is confronted as an obstacle and which repeatedly emerges as it marks the limits of life. For this latter figure, the border becomes omnipresent, indeed becomes the place where the migrant resides (Willen, 2010). Therefore, it could be argued, the role of the border is fundamentally to differentiate people from one another. That is, borders must be understood not only as enacting distinction, but as actively administering and producing difference. Their function is not only to separate the rich from the poor, the internationally mobile from the nationally confined, but to construct and enact the categories used to distinguish one person from the next, and then to grant passage and mobility and all of their attendant privileges to some, while denying them to others.
Borders therefore can become instruments of differentiation: this differentiation is always in the service of capital, and indeed the distinction is between those who circulate capital and those who are circulated by capital. Here Balibar’s (2002) contribution allows the opportunity to discuss borders by acknowledging a clearly articulated rationale for a shift away from thinking in terms of stable sites, as well as a defense the beginning of an articulation of what borders do that draws attention to this doing. He locates the implementation of the border as the site of the border: it exists where it is done. As a consequence, borders as operations of power become visible as different for different people (different people are done differently by the border), as implicated in instituting and producing difference, and as not situated at stable and delimited sites. Balibar (2002) encourages a shift toward thinking of borders in terms of existing where they are done, and as most importantly about practices and encounters with these practices.
Addressing the experience of being stateless, especially with reference to children, the shift in border practices leads to more diffuse internal policing and the externalization of border controls consequently defines border(s) in terms of “deterritorialization” (Andrijasevic, 2010). The deterritorialization of borders refers to the ways that borders increasingly and in a variety of ways operate at both sites that are geographically external to the nations that are represented by them, and within the internal space marked by the border. Seeing the border as one that has been “deterritorialized” is a way to look at the dislocation of controls once enacted at national border posts and now exercised in a spatially disaggregated way and via a variety of means (Andrijasevic, 2010). These means specifically including the functions that have been externalized to host countries, as well as other policing measures that are carried out internally, such as identity controls carried out by police and carrier liability legislation that makes transportation companies accountable for the people they transport (Andrijasevic, 2010). In addition to pointing to both international and external practices of bordering, speaking in terms of a deterritorialized border instead of an externalized border has the advantage of not repeating the presumption of a neat inside/outside division between national spaces. Borders for individuals who are stateless emerge from this discussion in a new form and are captured via new metaphors. Instead of being linear structures firmly located at the edges of territory, the borders of a nation can be depicted as “mobile and dispersed” (Rumford, 2012, p.159), “discontinuous and porous” (Andrijasevic, 2010, p.155), “networked” (Walters, 2006, p.195), “ephemeral and/or palpable” (Vaughan-Williams, 2012, p.583), and biopolitical (Vaughan-Williams, 2012). What these accounts have in common is that they shift from considering the border in its most obvious space—where it is resolutely, structurally instituted at the limits of a national territory—toward thinking of the border as the site where the control function of the border is performed.
The right to a nationality implies the right of each individual to acquire change and retain a nationality. The right to a nationality remains a fundamental human right as afforded by article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) providing that “[e]everyone has the right to a nationality” and that “[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” In this way, article 15, enshrining citizenship and the right to be free from arbitrary deprivation of citizenship as human rights in and of themselves, establishes the bedrock legal relationship between individuals and states. While all states are bound to respect the human rights of all individuals without distinction, an individual’s legal bond to a particular state through citizenship (Wastl-Walter, 2011; see also Weiss Brodt & Collins, 2006) is in practice an essential prerequisite to the enjoyment and protection of the full range of human rights. The proliferation of human rights norms in international and regional instruments has fostered substantive limitations on state sovereignty over citizenship regulation that gives meaning to that provision. In particular, the universal anti-discrimination norm and the principle that statelessness should be avoided have emerged to constrain state discretion on citizenship (Salter, 2008; 2010).
Some significant gaps in the international legal framework on nationality persist considering, for instance, that few normative principles prescribe conditions for granting citizenship (Salter, 2012). Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus on what constitutes statelessness arising from ineffective citizenship which in turn perpetuate the experience of different borders for different people. While human rights developments over the years have made great strides in giving content and meaning to article 15 of the UDHR, further normative and practical developments remain essential to fulfil the valuable promise of that provision. Because states have the sovereign right to determine the procedures and conditions for acquisition and loss of citizenship, statelessness and disputed nationality must ultimately be resolved by governments so that borders mean exactly the same of all citizens (Popescu, 2012).
The right to retain a nationality corresponds to the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality (Rigo, 2005). Arbitrary deprivation of nationality, therefore, effectively places the affected persons in a more disadvantaged situation concerning the enjoyment of their human rights because some of these rights may be subjected to lawful limitations that otherwise would not apply (Ramalo, 2011), but also because these persons are placed in a situation of increased vulnerability to human rights violations (Reed, 2006).
Having Margins without Living at the Margin
The notion of control at the border relies on a presumption of a precise separation between internal territory and the external borders of the space (Paasi, 2011). This conception reproduces an inside/outside dichotomy which reinforces the challenges faced by stateless individuals almost suspended between the need to belong to a community and the acknowledgment that belonging entails a legal and emotional shift to their status.
Longing to belong and have borders is an aspiration rather than a choice. Mizruchi (1983) argues that societies create abeyance structures to regulate the impact of surplus populations in the city by holding potentially dissident, marginal people under surveillance in control situations, until status vacancies open elsewhere. Stateless people are treated as a surplus population, despite their claim to community and entitlement to citizenship. Many stateless people are eligible for a residence permit on different grounds other than statelessness, and they are often not aware of the existing procedure for the recognition of the stateless status (Nguyen & Sperfeldt, 2012). Even though those people may have a regular permit of stay, they face difficulties due to their lack of nationality at the moment they have to enjoy some specific rights, such as the right to marry. For those people, as well as for the organizations they get in touch with (for instance, NGOs, hospitals, National Registrar), many problems could be solved through campaigns spreading information on statelessness (Gibney, 2014). Stateless people could also find themselves in need of applying for refugee status or a form of subsidiary protection (George, 2013). Even in case they are recognised as having the right to refugee status or subsidiary protection, they can
