UNHCR 2014 Statelessness Research Award interviews... Jason Tucker

"Statelessness challenged my preconceived notions about citizenship, which I naively assumed everyone had. Statelessness facilitated a new way to consider citizenship, the nation-state and global citizenship. However, as I learnt more and encountered the devastation that statelessness causes to people’s lives, what began as an intellectual challenge, quickly turned into an all consuming cause".

In this series of blog posts, we will be asking the students honoured in this year's UNHCR Award for Statelessness Research about their experiences studying the phenomenon on statelessness and their research findings. First in the series is Dr Jason Tucker, whose doctoral thesis entitled "Challenging the tyranny of citizenship: Statelessness in Lebanon", which earned him his PhD at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Bath (United Kingdom), was chosen by the Jury as the Best Research in the Doctoral Category.

Could you summarise, in 2 or 3 sentences, what your research was about?

Nation-states, are a relevantly new concept. They are fluid, arbitrarily conceived and being constantly contested. Similarly, citizenship, as a legal bond between and individual and a state, can be seen in the same light. Statelessness, it is argued in my research, is a consequence of the linking of these two much contested concepts. By viewing the nation-state, citizenship and global citizenship through the eyes of those trying to address statelessness, we gain a more nuanced understanding of them individually as well as their relationship.

What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?

I was doing research on Sudanese refugees in Cairo in 2010. The women I was working with could not access their consulate, register the births of their children and didn’t even have refugee status. Later, on learning about the succession of South Sudan, I began to consider the impact this would have on these women. How would they claim/confirm their citizenship? Would it be in Sudan or South Sudan? Would they have a choice? And what would happen if they ended up with no citizenship at all?

At the time there was very little written about statelessness, and trying to grapple with the idea provided an irresistible intellectual challenge. It challenged my preconceived notions about citizenship, which I naively assumed everyone had. Statelessness facilitated a new way to consider citizenship, the nation-state and global citizenship. However, as I learnt more and encountered the devastation that statelessness causes to people’s lives, what began as an intellectual challenge, quickly turned into an all consuming cause.

Why did you choose this particular research topic?

Lebanon, with many stateless populations, provided a rich empirical setting to undertake my research. It also allowed me to include the stateless Palestinians, who at the time were peripheral in statelessness debates. I am glad to see that this is changing slightly as of late. Empirical richness was needed as the research was exploratory, and required contextual complexity and various large stateless groups with differing claims to compare. Further to this, while there was some information about statelessness in Lebanon, much more information was, and still is, needed. It is a vast problem in the country, a problem that is being insufficiently tackled.

Could you briefly describe how you went about your research? E.g. did you base it on existing sources – and were they easy to find? Did you do fieldwork or interviews – and what was that like?

Global citizenship was the main theoretical current in my research. So initially it was to the abundant literature on this that I turned. However, a theme soon emerged, one that I thought was in danger of weakening the foundations of the various global citizenship theories. People who act as global citizens were implicitly or explicitly assumed to have citizenship of a state/political community in both modern and more classical conceptualisations. The contemporary models see citizenship of a nation-state as a means to judge a person’s act of citizenship as one that is global, having an expanded moral obligation beyond their nation-state into the trans-national/global realm. The stateless had not been adequately considered, so 10 million people in the world could not act as global citizens under many of the dominant theories. If global citizenship excludes the stateless, how can it be global?

This, however, did not lead to my rejection of global citizenship, in which I place great value. A new approach was therefore needed to overcome these theoretical concerns. By considering global citizenship through the eyes of those addressing statelessness in Lebanon, some of whom are stateless, I was able to provide a new theoretical approach to assessing acts of global citizenship. I spent three months in Lebanon undertaking interviews, participant observation and engaging with the many stateless communities and key actors.

What was the greatest challenge you had to deal with in undertaking your research?

Initially it was the lack of existing literature on statelessness. However, this provided an opportunity as well as a challenge, as there was a gap that needed filling. The work available at the time could be divided into legal analysis, which often left out the human element, or work on the human element that often ignored the legal analysis, and as a consequence labelled many groups stateless, who actually were not.

This division was never more obvious than when presenting my research. When speaking to those in the social sciences they would often question why I had such a ridged legal definition of who is stateless. When speaking to lawyers they would wonder why I treated citizenship and the nation-state as such ambiguous and arbitrary terms. The middle ground, linking the human and the legal was a challenging and highly rewarding place to be. 

Could you briefly summarise your main findings or conclusions – or what you think is the most important outcome of your research?

The main findings on a theoretical level was a new means by which we can conceptualise global citizenship that includes the stateless. However, the more pragmatic findings were of greater interest to me. Statelessness highlights the weakness of the current ‘ownership’ of citizenship by nation-states.  This is a relatively modern link, and I shifted the burden of justification for discussing the concept of citizenship outside of the nation-state, on to those who assume this to be citizenship's natural place. In fact, citizenship does not have a natural place within the nation-state. Nation-states have laid claim to it and present the current system as if it was ahistorical. But the existence of statelessness highlights that this is by no means a natural place for citizenship to be. Nothing shows this more clearly than protracted cases of statelessness, where generation after generation languish outside of the nation-state system. Statelessness, is a consequence of this flawed relationship, and highlights the weaknesses of the current nation-state system. To strengthen itself, it is argued in the research, the nation-state system, individually and collectively, should look to end statelessness.

What tips would you give to students who are getting involved in statelessness research to help them? E.g. are there particular questions you think they should be looking at or methodological issues they should consider?

I would advise to look at it using an inter-disciplinary approach. It seems like a buzzword now, but I think there is enormous value in it for understanding statelessness. This is because it stems from a legal phenomenon, however its impacts are human and have a significant impact from the level of the individual, their family, their community, the countries they reside in and the international community. To tackle statelessness we need more research, a greater level of understanding of the causes and consequences, and this is most achievable if we embrace varied and diverse perspectives. 

Visiting Scholar, Jason Tucker: "Introducing myself and my research"

I have been asked to use this blog as an opportunity to introduce myself, my background and my current research.  My area of interest lies particularly within the field of migration studies. In the past I have worked on human trafficking in the Indonesian and US contexts and with informal civil society organisations for Sudanese refugees in Cairo. For several years now though I have focused specifically on statelessness. I began my PhD at the University of Bath, in the U.K, in 2010 and have just entered my final year.  My thesis looks at the concepts of global citizenship and how they are being used to address statelessness.

Exploring the magnitude of the literature and theoretical debate surrounding global citizenship would pose an unrealistic challenge due to the restrictions of the size of this post. Several key areas though can be highlighted to reflect the breadth of this debate and its relevance to the statelessness discourse. When the concept of global citizenship (sometimes referred to as cosmopolitanism) is introduced it is often the case that the audience, if not versed on the topic, will either conceptualise it as future ‘world citizenship’ with various manifestations such as a world passport and/or a world government, or on the other hand think of it as a vacuous buzz word, thrown around by activists, politicians, businesses and anyone who wants to jump on the global citizenship band wagon. In both cases it is easy to dismiss it as either overly idealistic or so vaguely defined as to be insignificant. 

While these two conceptualisations are not totally without merit they by no means even begin to scratch the surface of the depth and nuances of the debate on global citizenship. To mention but a few ways that this expanded moral obligation has been theorised we can see Nussbaum’s (1996) ‘cosmopolitan education’, Buchanan’s (2004) focus on legal cosmopolitanism, Held’s (1999) argument that international institutions should internalise cosmopolitan principles and enforce them through international laws, Linklater’s (1999) claim it should be realized through trans-state dialogue in international institutions and the idea of ‘deliberative democracy’ put forward by such scholars as Habermas.

So then how do these concepts relate to the statelessness discourse? Examples of this are few and far between. But they do exist. For example, Byers (2005:2 my emphasis) noted:

“There are tens of millions of stateless persons in the world today. They have no right to reside, vote, express opinions, associate or travel anywhere at all. Their lack of national citizenship, and their consequential, desperate need for governmental assistance and accountability, makes them the most obvious candidates for global citizenship”.

My thesis aims to begin to explore the relationship between global citizenship and the addressing of statelessness, with a specific focus on Lebanon. My research arose due to the assumptions made by several scholars that the stateless, having none of the normal channels through which to participate in the nation-state system, could benefit from global citizenship, as Byers’ quote reflects. This however was the limit of his theoretical reflection, and more generally the assumed relationship has not been based on empirical foundations but remains abstract and normative. Finding this a highly interesting, though as of yet a greatly under-researched and theorized idea, I decided to contextualise this assumption in a country with multiple, vast, protracted and varying stateless communities and persons, namely Lebanon. This highly complex national environment allowed me to draw on comparisons between the actors addressing the statelessness of the different stateless groups in the country, with the aim of reaching a more grounded understanding of the use of global citizenship upon which to base future debate. To do this I spent three months in Lebanon at the beginning of the year interviewing those working with the stateless in the country, based out of the Lebanese American University in Beirut.

I am currently working through and analyzing all the data that I collected from my time in Lebanon and am unable to provide a conclusive set of findings at this moment. I can, however, reflect on a few broad topics that have arisen so far.  The data highlights how the various stateless groups reflect on the concepts of citizenship and nationality, how the government use the concept of the suspension of judicial order in certain spaces inhabited by the stateless, with these ‘stateless spaces’ being the subject of multiple and partial sovereignties as developed by Giorgio Agamben (1993,1998, 2005), and finally the claim of the ‘natural’ statelessness of the Bedouin.  Following a detailed analysis of the conceptualisations of the nation-state and citizenship and relating this statelessness focused assessment to the state-nation-territory trinity in the first two analytical chapters of my thesis, the final chapter focuses specifically on global citizenship, trying to draw out a relatively inclusive understanding of what form of it is being used to address statelessness in Lebanon. One line of thinking that I am developing at the moment is the concept of the paradox of defining the Palestinians NGOs and activists as global citizens, since their moral obligation only extends to fellow Palestinians and they are using it for reductionist ends, namely to regain citizenship within a Palestinian state. To reconcile this theoretical concern, I argue that we need to shift our understanding of global citizenship away from the claim that it can only manifest itself as the actions of an individual with an expanded sense of moral obligations to that of global citizenship as a means to create a space for dialogue.

Following my time in Lebanon earlier this year I transferred to the Statelessness Programme for six months at the beginning of October, which is where I am currently working through my data, as well participating in other projects taking place here. During my time in Tilburg I have developed my understanding of statelessness under international law and how to situate this legal understanding back within more sociological debates.  By drawing on the internationally recognised legal definition of statelessness in sociological research we open an under utilised avenue to understanding the phenomenon with the view to more effectively addressing it. Further to this, my time here has allowed me to better understand the development of the stateless discourse within the UNHCR, the problems they face, and how some of these hurdles have been overcome.

Jason Tucker, Visiting scholar with the Statelessness Programme

 

References / further reading

Agamben, 1993, Beyond Human Rights [online], Available from: http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN15_P90-95(1).pdf, [Accessed 9/11/2011]

Agamben, G. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. D. Heller-Roazen, Trans. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, G., 2005, State of Exception, Kevin Attell Trans, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Byers, M., 2005, Are You a Global Citizen? [online], The Tyee, Available from: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/10/05/globalcitizen/, [Accessed 14/2/2011]

Held, D., 1999, Transformation of Political Community: Rethinking Democracy in the Context of Globalization, In: I, Shapiro and C, Hacker-Cordón (eds), Democracy's Edges, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Linklater, A., 1999, Cosmopolitan Citizenship, In Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuter (eds), Cosmopolitan Citizenship, Houndsmill: Macmillan, pp.35-59

Nussbaum, M., 1996, Reply, In Cohen, J., (ed) For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Boston: Beacon Press

Who ’deserves’ to be stateless?

In 1994, the State of Lebanon introduced a decree that would extend its citizenship to an estimated 200,000 individuals, approximately 80,000 of whom were reported to previously be stateless. This was meant to resolve the problem of individuals who had been overlooked at registration when the country’s citizenship laws were first developed and enforced and who were left as ‘maktoum alkayd,’ or undocumented. Unfortunately it would go on to become one of the most controversial decrees, immersed in the nation’s core preoccupation; confessional demographics. On October 2011, 17 years later, the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister signed a new decree that would allow the State to denaturalize individuals who benefited from the 1994 decree but did not actually ‘deserve’ to obtain Lebanese citizenship. The first step of this development is said to encompass ‘only’ 200 individuals, with ‘next’ steps pledged.

The motivation behind the 94 decree, as with any political act, has always been contested. The main contention was that it was ultimately used for sectarian and electoral purposes. Confessional and political forces did play a role in the decree but it was the authorities’ responsibility to take long-term effective measures to prevent this - and is not something that individuals, having established the last 17 years of their families lives as Lebanese citizens, should now suffer from. Alongside the stateless population who gained citizenship, many others came from an estimated 80 different countries. Although excluded from the decree - as this would have gone against the constitution – some Palestinians were believed to have naturalized, and it was argued that many Syrians fraudulently obtained Lebanese ID documents. Amongst the large communities of unregistered Lebanese, members of the same family who had all applied were each treated differently, often leaving a mix of stateless and Lebanese individuals amongst siblings. All these contentions resulted, in 2003, in a State Council decree being issued at the request of the Maronite League agreeing to revisit this naturalization effort. Because of this the legal effectiveness of this naturalized status has always been questionable, an effectiveness that will not progress under this new development

In light of this arbitrary, unregulated and politically sensitive atmosphere, concerns regarding the legitimacy and authority of the next steps of this new decree arise. The worry is that the mistakes committed by institutions or government bodies will, without strict regulations and protective frameworks in place, create new cases of statelessness and related problems seventeen years on. These problems may be even more difficult to address now that this naturalization effort has been largely unsuccessful and has made the situation more sensitive. The procedures attached to this new development have not been elaborated and raise many questions. How will fraudulent applications be reviewed? Why has it been stated that most of the 200 individuals selected are Christian - especially as the original controversy surrounded the argument that mostly Muslims had been naturalized? How will these individuals be selected? What are the ‘next steps’ in this series of withdrawal of citizenship? Most importantly, will there be regulations ensuring that those whose nationalities are withdrawn have another, effective, nationality?

Surprisingly, in a country where everything is shrouded in controversy and debated ferociously by opposing forces, there has, to date, been little debate or comment on this new development. To understand and address the controversies is important – but this new decree can only be a step backwards. The ambiguity over who ‘deserves’ it with no clarification as to the scope and extent of these series of withdrawals will be interpreted as opening an opportunity for discretionary practices. The extent to which this may lead to possible cases of statelessness is a huge worry in a state that does little to address or protect its current stateless population.

As part of its MENA research project, the Statelessness Programme will continue to monitor the developments and impacts of this new decree.

Zahra Albarazi, MENA Project Coordinator, Statelessness Programme

Beirut hosts statelessness dialogue

Women and men from states across the Middle East and North Africa affected by gender discrimination in nationality law gathered last week to discuss their experiences.  This exploration of the connection between gender discrimination and statelessness in the MENA region gave a window into the consequences of women not being able to fully benefit from their citizenship because of their gender.  Organized by the UNHCR and CRTD-A, a Lebanese NGO that focuses on women’s rights, this joint initiative for a conference: Dialogue with Women on Gender Discrimination and Nationality, was held.  Hearing the overwhelming impacts of statelessness from the families themselves- stepping away from the legal and political arguments - gave a moving insight into how living without a legal link to any State leads to a day to day struggle.

Having married a man from Mali, who shortly after having their child left, a mother from Syria told us how this had put her daughter in a hopeless situation.  From not being able to obtain a graduation certificate despite having finished 4 years of university education to having no access to employment, she told how her child who was unable to obtain her nationality was living a life unlike her peers’.  With inaccessibility to any Mali embassy, she is invisible with no prospects of legal marriage.

A  lady married to an Egyptian who had passed away before being able to register their children also shared her story.  Unable to give them her Jordanian nationality, she was left with bringing up six stateless children on her own.  Being the only person in the household who can work and provide for the family, she committed her life to getting an education for her children.  Her eldest son, who she struggled to get trained as a nurse, cannot access work in this field and hence is suffering from depression. 

A child of a mother in a similar position, this time from Lebanon, talked about the direct influence this issue had on his life, his family’s life and the effect this had on the community around him.  Despite being proud of his national sporting achievements and raising the Lebanese flag on an international stage, he cannot obtain Lebanese nationality papers. Two families have been rendered stateless, he cannot obtain the nationality of his country from his mother, his children cannot obtain it from his wife.  The future of his children and the viscous cycle they will continue to be in was what worried him most. 

These are just three of the many intricate stories shared.   Talking to all the participants it was striking to hear the common consequences generations have had to face because the woman married a non-citizen. Hearing and seeing how practical obstacles caused such psychological effects on the lives of many often led to emotional scenes for all.

Another unpromising and discerning theme common between the individuals was the dependency on discretionary acts to help them with their problems.  When asked how they had tried to change their position and what procedures they had taken to address them, there was always one answer. Wasta – having contacts in significant positions.  They all felt that the only opportunity to get help by knowing the right people, and those who knew no-one had no hope of change.   They were all aware of the social political and economic reasons behind the gender discrimination, but understanding the situation did not make it more acceptable.

Many representatives of women’s organizations across the MENA also joined the conference.  On Wednesday they discussed initiatives and strategies they had implemented in their own countries to advocate for change.  Yemeni, Moroccan and Algerian representatives explained the steps they had taken which resulted in reform - although not always exhaustive reform - in their own countries.  These included cooperation with international bodies, religious leaders, media campaigns, and continued pressure - often for many years - on the political decision makers.   There are many types of discrimination across much of the legislation in the region, but none so direct as male-dependent nationality. Often achieving change required changing societal perspectives before approaching legislative reform.

There were periods where the affected participants expressed hopelessness and lacked any real faith in future changes.  Uncertainty of what the future held for their families angered and saddened everyone present. Stories varied, details and procedures changed.  But the suffering between the individuals was the same. All due to a piece of paper they could not obtain. All due to institutional gender discrimination. 

Zahra Albarazi, MENA Project Coordinator, Statelessness Programme

The stubborn cloak of legal invisibility

In the context of the gripping tales of Harry Potter, the invisibility cloak is a magical object. It offers Harry the opportunity to enjoy some innocent adolescent mischief, while it also provides a snug layer of protection when his life is in danger. This is undeniably the invisibility of childhood fantasy and part of its charm and security lies in Harry’s ability to cloak himself in it, or reveal himself, at will. As such, it is difficult to think of a starker contrast with the phenomenon of legal invisibility, which imposes itself uninvited on its victims, is stubbornly resistent to efforts to lift its cloak, creates vulnerability rather than protection and can destroy the innocence of childhood.  

I have just returned from a conference in Belgrade, organised by Praxis – an NGO which is to be praised for both the high quality of its work and its incredible dedication to the human rights issues it seeks to address. For many years now, Praxis has been pushing for a solution to the situation of people in Serbia who lack legal personhood, for whom it has coined the evocative and fitting phrase “legally invisible”. They are people who lack any official recognition from any state authorities of their existence and of their identity. No birth certificate. No ID card. No citizenship document. Nothing. When trying to exercise any right under the law, they are confronted with the problem that legally, they don’t exist – they are invisible to the law. As such, they cannot exercise rights to health care, social welfare, housing, education, they cannot vote in elections, get married legally, register their children or appear as parties before courts or other state bodies, etc. Without recognition of the facts of their birth, or indeed, existence, these “legally invisible” people will often also find themselves at risk of statelessness, because their position under the applicable nationality laws cannot be formally established.

Praxis’ reports and a short documentary film which they have just put together (and we hope will be shared online), use a range of individual case studies to illustrate the ways in which people become legally invisible and why it proves to be such a difficult problem to shake. Here are two examples from recent reports:

Djulijan and Senad Case – Djulijan was born in 1999 in Kosovo Polje and had never been registered into birth registry book. He was admitted to hospital in Belgrade in 2006 using a “borrowed” health card. As a “legally invisible” person, Djulijan could not obtain health insurance, so his parents were forced to “borrow” a health card from their cousin Senad, born in Kragujevac in 2001 and registered into birth registry book […] In August 2006, Djulijan died in hospital, but the fact of death registered into the birth and death registry books was that of Senad, not Djulijan. […] Today, Senad is seven years old and lives as a “legally deceased” person, so he will not be able to enrol in school, receive medical treatment if necessary, or exercise other rights. Djulijan, on the other hand, lived and died as a “legally invisible” person.

Sabaheta Case – Sabaheta was born approximately 24 years ago, at home, as a child from a common-law [unregistered, informal] marriage. Her mother Nurija abandoned her soon after and went to Germany. Sabaheta grew up with her grandfather Miftarem. Today, she lives as a “legally invisible” person with her common-law husband and three children in a Roma settlement in Novi Sad. Sabaheta is not sure whether she was born in Montenegro or in Kosovo. Apart from her mother’s name, she is not acquainted with any other data about her parents. She neither has relatives from whom she could perhaps get these data and obtain mother’s documents. The only recorded evidence on Sabaheta’s existence is a letter of the Social Welfare Centre Niksic, Montenegro, sent to the Social Welfare Centre Zrenjanin in 2006 in which it was stated, inter alia, that Sabaheta is approximately 17 years old and not registered in birth registry book. Besides, she also possesses a certificate confirming that she is not registered in birth registry book in Niksic.

In its reports, Praxis goes on to explain the steps that it has helped people to take in order to establish their legal identity and lift the cloak of invisibility. More often than not, the legal proceedings they initiate are to no avail as the administrative authorities demand a whole host of substantiating documents that the applicant simply cannot produce. The procedures can also drag on for years and there are plenty of examples of legally invisible people submitting a request for so-called “subsequent registration” (i.e. late registration into the birth registry as the key step that formalises their legal existence), which is refused, appealed, sent back to the first instance body for review, refused again, appealed, etc etc. It can be heartbreaking work for the legal assistance team at Praxis and it is mystifying to hear how difficult it is to obtain official recognition from the authorities that a person is indeed living and breathing in front of them.

Unfortunately, it is not only in the small state of Serbia where people are cast into legal invisibility. In my own first encounter with Praxis, at an event on statelessness in the spring of 2010, I slipped into an easy conversation with their inspirational Executive Director Ivanka Kostic. We quickly discovered that the issues she was confronted with bore an uncanny similarity to the situation I had discovered in Lebanon, where I was working at the time. In Lebanon, there is also a significant problem of legal invisibility, affecting a group described in Arabic as Maktoum al kayd, or “unregistered”. In a 2007 newspaper article written by Fatima Rida, the description of one such case is telling:

Malik has vanished from under the bridge where he used to sleep. His disappearance was accompanied with uncertain details that eventually turned into negative signals, especially as it became certain that he has not gone to jail for the “eight” time. “We let him down…so he left and never came back”, bitterly spoke the social worker as she spoke of Malik who frequented her office at a social service center in the southern suburb of Beirut two years ago. The young man had promised her to stop mutilating himself every time the police confronted him “while he waited for an identity card that would shield him from the torture of detention and jail for the eighth time on the charge of homelessness.” He was “accustomed” to pulling a razor he constantly kept on him to cut his hands and legs to keep the police officers away from him because “no one wants me to die in his arms, so they let me go” as he used to say. On the last occasion, the social worker had to inform him that his legal motion to obtain him an identity card was rejected despite all efforts. She adds, “he looked at us as if he knew the answer. Then he left…and vanished after a another clash with the security forces.” [translation from Arabic text published in Al Hayat]

It is unusual for the media to report on this phenomenon and the situation in Lebanon has not received much press since this piece was printed. However, by strange coincidence, on the day that I was in Belgrade, discussing Serbia’s invisible people with Praxis and colleagues from across Europe, a new article appeared in a Lebanese newspaper about the legally invisible there and their exposure to statelessness. There is still much that needs to be understood about the situation in Lebanon and  in Serbia, in order to get to the bottom of why these cases are proving to be so difficult to resolve and why the cloak of legal invisibility is such a stubborn one. And of course there is also a wider and pressing question: who else will Ivanka or I find outselves sitting next to in meetings in years to come, only to discover new stories of legal invisibility in other countries around the world?

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme