Showing posts with label PhD research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PhD research. Show all posts

Tuesday, 21 October 2014

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. 

Thursday, 28 November 2013

"Nationality Matters", 5 years on: how far statelessness has travelled



Exactly five years ago today, I found myself in the main auditorium of Tilburg University, wearing a brand new dress, armed with a hot-off-the-press copy of my PhD manuscript “Nationality Matters”, ready to take the final step towards earning my ‘Dr’ title. In front of family, friends and colleagues, I stood on the podium, tackling questions on my research from a committee of professors who were clad in the traditional gowns of academia and who protocol dictated I address as “highly esteemed opponent”. I have no recollection now of either what was asked or what I answered, but I do remember the buzz that it gave me to – finally, in my eyes – have a truly captive audience for a discussion on ‘my’ topic and passion: statelessness. According to the rules in place in Tilburg, the examining committee and I, as well as our audience, would only be released from the task of exploring my research findings once a full 45 minutes had passed and the officiator (the “beadle”) re-entered the auditorium to strike the floor with the ceremonial staff he has charge of for this purpose and call an end to the proceedings. Although this is perhaps not the experience of everyone who has stood in my shoes and defended their PhD, I really enjoyed it! After 4 years of hard work, these 45 minutes were just the opportunity I had been waiting for to try to win some fresh hearts and minds on the issue. Thinking back to it today makes me smile.

What makes me smile more is thinking about all of the things that have happened since. I would be the first to admit that statelessness has not been resolved – far from it – and we are facing new and severe crises in terms of guaranteeing that stateless people are protected (think of the deterioration of the situation of stateless people in Myanmar) and ensuring that statelessness is avoided (think of the recent Constitutional Court ruling in the Dominican Republic that may create thousands of new cases). Yet the context in which this is happening, and even the very awareness that it is happening and that it is a problem, is very different today. Momentum to address statelessness has built in a manner I did not and could not have foreseen on the day I defended my PhD research. For example…

Growing the circle of ‘friends of statelessness’

While certainly not alone in my concern for statelessness over the course of my PhD project nor at its conclusion in 2008, there were only really a very small number of people worldwide who were interested or able to dedicate a significant amount of time and attention to the issue. Today, statelessness is no longer a lonely profession. All around the world students, activists, lawyers, policy makers and others are taking up the cause. Staffing within the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – the UN agency mandated by the General Assembly to address statelessness – is indicative of this trend. In my PhD I bemoaned the fact that of a 6000-strong staff, less than a handful were dedicated to statelessness. Five years on and the team at headquarters level has expanded in size, regional officers have been posted to help to coordinate and support work on statelessness in five major regions of the world, many national offices have dedicated staff and agency-wide there is far greater awareness of and capacity to contribute to statelessness work thanks to a concerted effort to hundreds more staff on the issue. Within civil society, there has also been a transformation, from a situation in which a few isolated individuals and organisations had devoted themselves to the unenviable task of dragging the issue out of obscurity, initiatives are now mushrooming. Within Europe, this engagement is even starting to take on a new level of sophistication. A region-wide coalition of civil society actors launched in the summer of 2012 – the European Network on Statelessness – has rapidly grown to an 80-member strong network and is already embarking on its first pan-European, coordinated campaign.

Embracing the UN statelessness conventions

The focus of my PhD research was the international legal framework relevant to addressing statelessness, placing centre-stage the two UN conventions that have been specifically designed for the purposes of responding to statelessness (deconstructing and contrasting these against norms found within international human rights law). Described, by UNHCR as recently as 1999, as “orphan conventions”, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness were certainly largely unknown, much less appreciated international law tools. Again I am reminded by my own manuscript that at the time of publication in 2008, these conventions had just 62 and 34 state parties respectively. Today, 5 years on, the tally has climbed to 79 and 54. These numbers may still fail to impress those who are used to the ratification figures for instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (187 state parties) or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (193 state parties). Nevertheless, when put in perspective, the upward curve in accessions is significant. For instance, consider the fact that it took the 1961 Convention 40 years to gather its first twenty state parties and now it has achieved the same in just the last five years. It is no wonder that UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has described these developments as “unprecedented” and the public expressions of commitment by states to statelessness through these and other channels as a “quantum leap” for the issue. Having often wondered, during the tougher days of my PhD project, whether there was a point to poring over the text and interpretation of two old and neglected international treaties, it is particularly rewarding to see that their enduring value is not just being recognised, but also seized upon, as a way for states to reinvigorate their efforts to tackle the problem of statelessness.  

Welcoming much-needed conceptual guidance

… Throughout my PhD research there was one particular challenge that I kept coming back to, again and again: the question of what exactly the scope of the definition of a stateless person is and how this definition should be applied in practice to identify whether a particular individual is stateless. While this was not ultimately central to answering my research question, it is something that nagged at me. I clearly remember feeling frustrated by the absence of the kind of core conceptual guidance on these questions that exists, for example, in the field of refugee law. In the end, I included a comment to this effect in my conclusion, suggesting that further clarification was sorely needed on these and other aspects of statelessness law and that UNHCR should lead this process. Five years on and UNHCR is well on its way to elaborating a handbook on statelessness! It has already issued highly informative guidelines on the definition of a stateless person, how to go about the process of identification/determination of statelessness and what status a stateless person should enjoy in accordance with international obligations. There is even guidance on how the safeguards to prevent statelessness at birth must be interpreted and implemented; and soon there will be a clarification of the norms and standards around loss and deprivation of nationality. To someone like me, who struggled alone in an office with a whiteboard and marker, scribbling and re-scribbling ideas/diagrams/flowcharts to try to make sense of it all, the issuance of this much-needed guidance is perhaps the greatest and most significant change. We now have a shared understanding as our starting point and a very well-crafted set of documents that lay the conceptual foundations for anyone who wants to provide training, undertake research or engage in debate on statelessness issues. I have had the pleasure of being involved in many rewarding statelessness activities since completing my PhD and it would be difficult to pick a particular one that stands out from among them. However, I feel particularly privileged to have been able to participate in the expert meetings held to date, the conclusions of which informed the subsequent UNHCR guidelines – and some of my fondest statelessness memories are of collectively thrashing out, once and for all, these fascinating conceptual questions.

Setting bold ambitions for the future

… I also have the sense that, for want of a better way to describe it, the language of statelessness has changed over the last five years. Where once people were almost apologetic about raising the issue or mentioning the relevant conventions at events or in publications, given the above developments there is now a sense that statelessness has earned its place on the agenda and it is spoken about with greater confidence. There is also much more and more diverse information, research, stakeholders, activities, etc regarding statelessness. With the broader engagement of actors, wider acknowledgement of the issue and the relevance of the international framework, clearer conceptual understanding and increase in confidence, it feels as though there is also a shift in ambition. Perhaps the boldest expression of this new level of ambition is the explicit call made by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, to the agency’s executive body to work to eradicate statelessness, in a decade. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, has said that there should be no stateless children in Europe. Just this month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reportedly called for an end to statelessness ahead of a visit to Latvia, where almost 300,000 people are still without a nationality. Every year since I started my research, but especially in the last five years, I have watched closely as bigger, bolder and more exciting initiatives have unfolded. Certainly, there is no more question as to whether statelessness is an issue in its own right: it is and more must and will be done.

These are just a few reflections on how far statelessness has travelled in just five years – there is undoubtedly plenty more to say on the matter. These comments should not by any means be mistaken as insinuating that the change has come about because of the publication of my PhD. To the contrary, I am grateful that the issue ‘found’ me at the time that it did and that I have been able to watch and where possible contribute to some of these developments. Statelessness remains, 5 years on from that exciting day in Tilburg University’s auditorium and almost 10 years on from the day I first crossed paths with the issue, an intrinsically fascinating, intellectually stimulating, deeply moving and truly rewarding problem to work on.

A single regret

On this personal statelessness anniversary, as I reacquaint myself with my own PhD manuscript and think back to where my journey started, I have just one regret in terms of the path that I have chosen. It was the simple story of a worried father and a baby without a nationality that first spurred my interest in the topic. Had I never met this man – a client at the local refugee advice centre where I was volunteering at the time – and heard about his son, I would never have picked statelessness as the focus of my PhD. I am very grateful to this family for opening my eyes to an issue I had previously never contemplated or even heard of and my one regret is not being conscious of the significance of the encounter at the time. Because of that, I quickly lost touch of them and didn’t follow up on their story, so I am ignorant as to if and how it was resolved. I am also very conscious now of the fact that I also did not have the appropriate knowledge or understanding of the issue at the time to know how to help. Still, perhaps instead I can offer their story again here, as told in the opening of my PhD, in the hope that it may help others to understand my first answer to the question “why statelessness?” and perhaps inspire more people to be compassionate towards or even take up the cause of the stateless…

This is the story of the first stateless person I knew:

Once upon a time, in a town in the Southeast of the Netherlands, a baby boy was born. His parents were thrilled and named him Omar, seeing this extension of their family as a good sign for the future and a fresh start for them all. Omar’s parents had been forced to flee their homes in the Middle East some years before, leaving everything that they had behind. They eventually won the right to settle in the Netherlands and were making the most of it. Omar’s father found a job and quickly picked up the language. As soon as he was eligible, he successfully applied for the Dutch nationality in order to affirm his new link with the country. But what he most dearly wanted was to be able to marry Omar’s mother. Sadly, they did not have the documents required by Dutch law to do so. Instead, they muddled along in the hope that one day they would be able to afford to send for the right documents or pay for the replacements in order to get married.  

Then Omar was born and they were overjoyed. Omar’s father went straight from the hospital to the town hall to register the birth, all the while oozing the pride of a man who has newly become a father. Omar was registered: his name, date and place of birth recorded. But when the registrar logged “unknown” in the box marked “nationality”, Omar’s father grew worried. After all, he was Dutch and his son was born on Dutch soil, so surely Omar would also be Dutch.  

Little did he know that just a few months previously a new law had come into force. This law required him to register the imminent birth of his son while his girlfriend was still pregnant. Failing to do so - and because he and Omar’s mother were not married - he would not automatically be recognised as the boy’s father and his son would not acquire his nationality. 

Omar’s father quickly made the necessary arrangements at the local court to be legally recognised as the father, but this procedure did not grant Omar the Dutch nationality. Nor could Omar acquire the nationality of his mother, as she was the national of a country that did not allow women to pass on their nationality to their children. Omar’s nationality was therefore more than unknown: it was absent. He was stateless. 

After they had recovered from the shock, Omar’s parents began to discover the consequences of his statelessness. Omar could not obtain a passport, or be included in the passport of either of his parents, he could only apply for a foreigners’ travel pass at substantial cost. Omar was also registered by the immigration service as “a foreigner who entered the country for family reunification purposes” – an interesting feat for a baby just a few days old. His parents would have to pay a sizeable fee for a residence permit for Omar, without which he could, in theory, be subject to expulsion.  

Later, in order to have any hope of resolving his plight, Omar’s parents would have to fight for his formal recognition as a stateless person. This may then allow Omar to benefit from provisions in the Dutch law that offer nationality to a stateless child after three year, so long as he remains within the country in that time and under the care of his Dutch father.
This initial experience of statelessness provides much food for thought and one possible answer to the question “why statelessness?” can arguably already be found in the personal struggle of this family. Statelessness presents a real, human dilemma for this one boy and his parents.

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme

Wednesday, 9 October 2013

UNHCR Statelessness Research Award interviews... Lindsey Kingston

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. Third in the series is Dr Lindsey Kingston, whose doctoral thesis entitled "Legal Invisibility: Statelessness and Issue (Non) Emergence", which earned Kingston her PhD in social science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (United States) in 2010, received a special mention from the jury.

     1.       Could you summarise, in 2 or 3 sentences, what your research was about?
Statelessness has serious human rights consequences, yet it receives little attention from the international community. My doctoral dissertation at Syracuse University used the problem of statelessness to better understand the process of issue emergence, or the step in the process of mobilization when a pre-existing grievance is transformed from a problem into a human rights issue.

     2.       What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?
I first “discovered” the problem of statelessness on a research trip to Thailand in 2005. I was a graduate student at American University, and I had travelled to Thailand to learn about human trafficking. I soon realized that this issue was complicated by statelessness among various hill tribes, and that lack of legal nationality had serious consequences for minority groups.

     3.       Why did you choose this particular research topic?
After returning from Thailand, I had a very difficult time finding any information about statelessness – even from refugee agencies, which were often completely unaware of this problem. When I began my doctoral studies at Syracuse University, I started engaging with literature on social movements and transnational activism to better understand why such a terrible human rights issue wasn’t getting international attention. I found more questions than answers, so I decided to focus my dissertation research on the process of issue emergence within the human rights regime.

     4.       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?
I conducted qualitative interviews with decision-makers at leading human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I knew it would be difficult to gain access to my interview respondents, since they are incredibly busy people, and several professors warned me to have a “Plan B” in case I couldn’t collect the data. I was surprised (and gratified) to learn that these decision-makers were deeply interested in the questions I was asking, however, and we had some fascinating discussions. I was sure to share my research findings with all of my participants, and hopefully that information will help them in their own work.

     5.       What was the greatest challenge you had to deal with in undertaking your research?
My greatest challenge was that I was studying something that had not happened (at least, not yet): The issue emergence of statelessness on the international human rights agenda. Many of the NGO decision-makers I interviewed were not aware of the problem, or had not considered this issue within their organization. That forced me to broaden my interview protocol to focus on issue emergence in general, and then narrow that discussion to statelessness when possible.

     6.       Could you briefly summarise your main findings or conclusions – or what you think is the most important outcome of your research?
Interview data revealed four characteristic categories that play roles in issue emergence: strategic, environmental, issue, and organizational. Some of these characteristics figure prominently in existing literature, while others do not. Looking specifically at statelessness, the issue faces a number of key challenges for advocates – but it also enjoys a number of strengths that make mobilization possible. The most important outcome of this research is providing recommendations for future advocacy so that this critical issue receives the attention it deserves.

     7.       Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why / why not?
Certainly! It is exciting to see new attention to this issue, and I believe that researchers in this field have the ability to enact real change. Statelessness still hasn’t emerged in mainstream ways, but it’s getting there – and recent attention by the UNHCR and various NGOs is incredibly promising. The research community focused on statelessness is small but growing, and it’s composed of a dedicated and supportive group of people. I’m very grateful that these people are out there, and that they are willing to talk about this issue and brainstorm ways to advance this research agenda.

     8.       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?
Clearly there’s still a real lack of solid data for understanding the scope of this problem and its impacts. Field work is vital, particularly so that we can draw direct links between lack of legal nationality and other human rights violations/threats.  

Sunday, 27 January 2013

GUEST POST: New adventure in the world of statelessness


It has been two weeks since I moved to Madrid for my PhD in Advanced Studies of Human Rights in the University of Carlos III. If a year ago I was told that I would make up my mind to do a PhD, I would probably never believe it. But here I am, in Madrid, ready to start this adventure.

However, back then the biggest surprise for me would have been the area that I have now chosen for my research and….it is statelessness! And of course, frankly speaking, the reason for this is the Statelessness Programme. I have met Laura and Zahra in October 2011 during my interview for the internship position at the Statelessness Programme. From then on and till now, statelessness is a topic that fascinates me the most out of the wide range of unsettled issues in international law. I have heard of statelessness before during one of my general lectures on international law in the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, but I have never thought of choosing it as my field of research until I got that internship position at the Statelessness Programme. That is when I learnt that there is a shocking amount of stateless people in the world in the twenty first century (!), discovered the reasons of why people are stateless and much more. I have also attended an extremely interesting and informative course on Nationality, Statelessness and Human Rights given by Dr. Laura van Waas, the Senior Researcher and Manager of the Statelessness Programme. Moreover, I have written my Master Thesis in the area of statelessness, entitled  “Revocation of nationality from Dominicans of Haitian descent in light of the Bueno v. Dominican Republic case”, supervised by Laura.

Looking back, I must say it was quite a “statelessness year” and as it seems, there are about three or four more to come. I have just started my PhD in Spain, thus many things have to still be arranged and organized, however I can already reveal the theme that I am planning to do my research on and it is: “Access to basic human rights of stateless people and their implementation in the example of statelessness determination procedure in Spain”. There is still a long way to go, but I can feel the first steps already and I must say it’s very exciting.

Thus, I would like to thank Statelessness Programme, Laura and Zahra for opening the world of statelessness for me and letting me in “behind the scenes” of the “statelessness world”. I cannot wait to start my research and make my modest contribution to the treasury of researches in the area of statelessness.
Valeria Cherednichenko, former intern of the Statelessness Programme (2011-2012), now doing a PhD in Advanced Studies in Human Rights at the Institute of Human Rights Bartolomé de las Casas, Charles III University of Madrid

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Statelessness as a utopia


My own wish is to be a citizen of the world, to be a fellow-citizen to all men – a pilgrim, better still.’
Desiderius Erasmus, letter to Huldrych Zwingli, 1522.


Statelessness is a problem. All of us, academics, practitioners, activists, and even artists, who work with stateless persons, are sharply aware of the harsh reality of statelessness. Statelessness means instability, poverty, discrimination and despair. We work with the ‘problem’ of statelessness, because the human suffering takes priority over anything else.

But for me, statelessness is more than just a problem. There is something about the idea (and not the reality!) of statelessness that inspires me, that is ultimately romantic, and completely unrealistic. It is something vaguely communist, and maybe even anarchist. It is an idea of an individual who is beyond the state, who does not need the state. A stateless individual is beyond nationalism, wars and borders, not needing to belong anywhere and therefore welcome everywhere. Do you recognise this idea?

The birthday wishes from the Statelessness Programme Campaign put me in a dreamy mood. They addressed important issues – I can relate to all of them, and I wish all these wishes come true. Most of these wishes were policy objectives, lobbying plans and calls for activism. Many of them made me think: ‘Yes, I can really do something about this! If we join hands with all these dedicated people, we can make this wish come true!’. But there was one specific wish which I thought was a wish in the true sense of the word – a wish which cannot be realised within the practical limits of the world, and where you need involvement of some heavy magic:

‘I wish that statelessness soon only means there are no more states’ (a wish from Stichting STIL in Utrecht)

This is the wish I would make if I met a little fairy with a magic wand, or got hold of a Aladdin’s Lamp. It is my dream of a stateless utopia.

I wish sometimes that all people were stateless, and happy in their statelessness. I wish we didn’t need states – neither for practical purposes, nor for psychological reasons. I wish the world could be organised without borders, and individuals had something better to base their confidence on than their national identity. I don’t know how this can ever be true, or whether all my fellow human beings would agree to that, but I can dream, can’t I?

I wonder sometimes whether this image of a stateless utopia actually motivates me to help stateless persons. It is so far away from the reality of my every day working routine. The primary motivation is probably compassion to fellow human beings in great need of legal advice, but there are many categories of individuals who are in difficult legal situations, such as the refugees, the homeless, the ‘illegals’ and so on. There is also, of course, pure intellectual curiosity towards the legal complexities around the phenomenon of statelessness, but English tort law is not less complex, nor is the issue of animal rights. When I think of what makes statelessness so special for me that I am prepared to dedicate four years of my life to study it in a PhD project, and spend my free time giving legal advice to stateless persons, I come back to this romantic, impossible and nothing-to-do-with-reality image. While in my perfect world statelessness means the lack of a state in the life of an individual, I see how in reality statelessness (ironically!) leads to extreme dependence of individuals on states, and I want to do something about it. Even though I will never witness a stateless utopia, I do want to make the life of stateless persons a little less ‘state-full’, so that it does not revolve so much around papers, stamps, and moods of civil servants. I want stateless persons to be more independent, and more empowered in their relations with states.

Even though my dream is nothing but a dream, it clearly shapes the way I see my research. I don’t want to eliminate the problem of statelessness. Instead, I want statelessness to no longer be a problem. I am more interested in researching the issue of protecting stateless persons, rather than eliminating statelessness.

I would of course do anything within my power to help a stateless person to acquire the citizenship of some state, and cease to be stateless, since (alas!) it is often the best way to secure their access to basic rights. But while I would be doing that, I would hope that one day there would be no need for citizenship.

Katja Swider, Research Advice Service Coordinator, Statelessness Programme