UNHCR 2014 Statelessness Research Award interviews... Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project

"Although statelessness in the Dominican Republic has been well-publicized, our project focused on what we considered to be an under-researched dimension of the problem – in the context of significant recent legal developments in the Dominican Republic. We therefore sought to produce a report that could fill this research gap and equip advocates with findings regarding the harsh consequences of statelessness for children of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic." 

In this series of blog posts, we are asking the students honoured in this year's UNHCR Awards for Statelessness Research about their experiences studying the phenomenon on statelessness and their research findings. Last in the series is the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project which received a Certificate of Appreciation from the jury for outstanding student research for the report Left Behind: How Statelessness in the Dominican Republic Limits Children’s Access to Education. The report was written by a group of eight students, all enrolled in either Georgetown Law’s JD or LLM programme: Khaled Alrabe, Jamie Armstrong, B. Shaw Drake, Kimberly Fetsick, Elizabeth Gibson, Tabitha King, Young-Min Kwon and Franziska Veh. The research was conducted by these students in the context of a year-long practicum course and included a fact-finding mission to the Dominican Republic.

Could you summarise, in 2 or 3 sentences, what your research was about? 
Our research focuses on how statelessness impacts other fundamental rights of children, and particularly the right to education. Our report, “Left Behind: How Statelessness in the Dominican Republic Limits Children’s Access to Education,” shows that many children born in the Dominican Republic but descended from foreigners, particularly Haitians, are denied an education. For generations, such children were recognized as citizens, but within the last decade, the Dominican government has refused to issue many of them birth certificates, identity cards and other essential documentation, and rendered them stateless. The report concludes that the Dominican Republican is failing to comply with its domestic and international human rights obligations, including ensuring protection of the human right to education.

 What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness? 
Each year, HRI pursues work on one human rights issue with a small team of students, giving them the opportunity to research a human rights problem in depth, conduct extensive interviews on the subject, draft a comprehensive report on their findings, and engage in related advocacy. Student participants, with the support of HRI staff and expert faculty, are responsible for identifying the specific issue and designing research that can fill a significant research and advocacy gap.  Our multinational research team includes members from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds, and our interest in statelessness reflects this diverse experience. Some research group members brought particular regional expertise to our project, while others initially became interested in statelessness more generally, through work and academic experience in other areas. Uniting all of the graduate students in the group is a fundamental dedication to international human rights research and advocacy and a desire to cast new light on a particular dimension of the problem of statelessness in the Dominican Republic. 

Why did you choose this particular research topic? 
The topic of statelessness in the Dominican Republic was selected after careful consideration of a number of possible research sites and issues across the Americas. Although statelessness in the Dominican Republic has been well-publicized, our project focused on what we considered to be an under-researched dimension of the problem – in the context of significant recent legal developments in the Dominican Republic. We therefore sought to produce a report that could fill this research gap and equip advocates with findings regarding the harsh consequences of statelessness for children of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. 

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? 
In the Fall of 2013, the team conducted research into statelessness as a legal concept and its dimensions on the ground in the Americas. This process included significant consultation with human rights practitioners, grassroots activists, and legal experts, among others, to identify where there were research gaps to which our investigation could contribute – as well as how our work could relate to international and national advocacy efforts. In January 2014, we travelled to the Dominican Republic for a week to conduct in-person interviews with scores of affected persons, as well as service providers, educators, government officials, human rights practitioners and grassroots activists. Our interviews included children and adults affected by statelessness. Following the trip, we received several official statements from the Ministry of Education that allowed us to compare current policies to practices documented during our trip. We then synthesized these findings into a report. It was a rigorous and rewarding process that allowed us to do hands-on work while remaining grounded in sound legal analysis. 

What was the greatest challenge you had to deal with in undertaking your research? 
The greatest challenge our group faced was the overwhelming depth and long history of the problem we chose to investigate. Narrowing an issue such as statelessness in the Dominican Republic to examine just one aspect of how it impacts the lives of those affected was very difficult and left out so much, including the right to health and labor rights issues. All of these aspects are worthy topics for study. However, we felt that a focus on the impact of statelessness on children and the right to education as a gateway to the enjoyment of other rights would fill both a research gap and contribute a unique perspective to support advocacy promote yet broader protections of human rights in the Dominican Republic. Overcoming this challenge taught us how the toll of statelessness is wide-reaching and that the impacts of statelessness are interconnected. 

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

We found that many children born in the Dominican Republic but descended from foreigners, particularly Haitians, are denied an education. For generations, such children were recognized as citizens, but within the last decade, the Dominican government has refused to issue many of them birth certificates, identity cards and other essential documentation, rendering them stateless. Hence, the Dominican Republic is failing to comply with its domestic and international human rights obligations, including to protect the human right to education. Access to education for Dominicans of Haitian ancestry has been curtailed by discriminatory school policies and the arbitrary application of laws guaranteeing equal access to education.  Many of those we interviewed were denied access to – or a continuous place in – primary or secondary school because they lacked birth certificates. Students are unable to attend university without a cedula if they apply at the age of 18, or are forced to leave if they turn 18 while in university.  Therefore, the Government does not ensure equal access to education in violation of its own Constitution and international law. All of this occurs in spite of laws, policies, constitutional provisions and international human rights commitments that are meant to guarantee children’s right to education. The report found that administrative barriers, discrimination and confusion about the law has meant that in practice not all children in the Dominican Republic are able to go to school. 

Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why / why not? 
It has been an extremely rewarding experience to research the impact of statelessness in the Dominican Republic.  Not only were we able to build close relationships with experts in the        field, we were able to meet and speak with numerous individuals affected by statelessness and attempt to provide a platform for expression of their experiences.  Each member of our team takes great pride in our efforts to communicate the stories of children and their families in the Dominican Republic in our report and advocacy. Additionally, we hope that our having conducted research in a growing field will open the door to the unique impact that research like ours can have in other contexts.   

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? 
Our experience was improved by the in-depth background research we carried out while we were identifying a research question and a location for field work. Although we began with a broad    topic, based on a proposal from one member of the research team, the process of critically analysing this and a range of other research questions and field sites was extremely helpful. We would suggest that students and researchers who are interested in carrying out research on statelessness go through a similarly detailed process to identify a focus that stands to fill a gap in existing research. We would also particularly encourage other individual researchers and groups to engage in interview-based field research, as this is a powerful means to connect policy-makers with the practical reality of life for stateless people. As our research was completed by a group, we would further highlight the benefit of embracing diverse perspectives and believe that this contributed to the quality of the report that we were able to produce. Finally, we would emphasize the importance of careful planning when undertaking international field research, the requirement of continuously evaluating issues of risk and safety, and the absolute necessity to treat interviewees with professionalism, care, and generally striving to employ the highest ethical standards in carrying out research.

UNHCR 2014 Statelessness Research Award interviews... Helen Brunt

"Now is a unique and pertinent time to research statelessness from multi-disciplinary perspectives and through a variety of lenses including natural and social sciences. Furthermore, within the Sustainable Development Goals discourse, statelessness raises particular concerns because of the serious ecological threats to our planet, the vulnerabilities associated with statelessness, and the way that inequalities are reinforced by the condition."

In this series of blog posts, we are asking the students honoured in this year's UNHCR Awards for Statelessness Research about their experiences studying the phenomenon on statelessness and their research findings. Fourth in the series is Ms. Helen Brunt who received a Certificate of Appreciation from the jury for her graduate thesis Stateless Stakeholders, seen but not heard? The case of the Sama Dilaut in Sabah, Malaysia, written in completion of her degree in Anthropology and Development at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom).

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

Natural resource management and statelessness are two growing areas of academic study yet remain, so far, under-researched in combination. In my Masters dissertation I explored their relationship. Through the lens of statelessness, I investigated how some stakeholders are marginalised from participatory processes, how the condition of statelessness affects the extent to which meaningful participation in marine conservation management can occur, and how institutions involved in this management perceive and respond to stateless people. I used a case study of the Sama Dilaut (also referred to as ‘Bajau Laut’), stateless people without political recognition in Malaysia, to challenge some of the assumptions that marine protected areas (MPAs) can provide a win-win solution for conservation and sustainable development.

What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?

As a passionate environmentalist, in 2004 I was thrilled to be offered my ‘dream job’ coordinating a community and marine conservation project in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. While I was engaged with indigenous peoples’ issues, ten years ago I was ignorant to the plight of people with no nationality and no human rights protection, things that I as a British citizen took for granted. However, over the course of the next 8 years I became increasingly aware of the implications of statelessness through first hand experiences and close involvement with the Sama Dilaut, largely stateless group but who have for centuries lived in boats and on islands in the waters now overlaid by the current nation-states of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, yet are not considered to be citizens of any country. Today, many Sama Dilaut find themselves living in marine parks or ‘conservation zones’ and, although a key stakeholder group, rarely participate in management decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods. My research interests were therefore motivated directly by my personal experiences.

Why did you choose this particular research topic?

Whilst living in Sabah, on an almost daily basis, I saw out of one eye the dire state of our planet from an environmental perspective, and from the other, I saw people who were unable to move freely, be legally employed or married, access affordable healthcare, receive an education or make their voices heard. I saw such inequalities and barriers to inclusion of the Sama Dilaut in Malaysian society as being reinforced and perpetuated by their stateless status. Through my research I wanted to move anthropological and conservationist theories of stakeholders beyond what I saw as the problematic frameworks of ‘community’, ‘marginalised or minority groups’, and ‘resource users’ which I felt overlooked a lack of recognition by the state and thus denial of access to rights and representation allowed by citizenship.

I took the opportunity of dissertation research to examine in more detail the implications of statelessness on peoples’ every day lives, and to question whether ‘community participation’ is ever really possible due to the complexities of power dynamics, issues of visibility and audibility, conflicting interests, as well as the quality of participatory processes. I also examined how stateless people in Sabah are portrayed by the state, NGOs and other stakeholders, how the Sama Dilaut interact with management authorities and NGOs, and what some of the perceptions and processes are that serve to sustain the stateless position of the Sama Dilaut.

I titled my dissertation ‘Stateless Stakeholders, Seen but not Heard?’ as although the Sama Dilaut may be ‘seen’ through documentaries about their traditional lifestyle and livelihoods, and ‘consulted’ by NGOs espousing ‘participatory’ approaches to natural resource management, as stateless people they are not ‘heard’ by those whose decisions affect their lives, and thus they remain peripheral in every sense of the word.

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 chose my research topic due to my existing personal connections and because marine conservation reflects many of the broad environmental and social issues facing protected area managers. I also felt that there was a need to draw out formal and informal connections which reflect power dynamics and relations between different stakeholders, including the lived experiences – their reality – of people living in an area where there are restrictions to accessing the resources on which they depend.

I approached my research using qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis (a ‘mixed methods’ approach), drawing from both primary and secondary sources. My principle sources were the work of academics from the fields of natural resource management, statelessness and participation, as well as published and unpublished material from policy makers and practitioners working in marine conservation, including data I had collected while coordinating the Semporna Islands Project from 2004 until 2012. I also conducted an additional 2 months of fieldwork in 2013, which involved conventional anthropological techniques of participant observation, as well as interviews with key stakeholders. Fieldwork was the part of my research that I found the most inspiring.

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

One challenge I had to deal with was logistical. Despite being meticulously planned, 3 months prior to my departure, my fieldwork trip threatened to be seriously disrupted by an ‘incursion’ of my field site in eastern Sabah by armed rebels from the southern Philippines, who were pursuing a 300-year old claim to the region. Fortunately, the UK government’s travel advisory was lifted just weeks before I commenced my fieldwork but it brought to the forefront some of the challenges of conducting social research in unstable areas and with vulnerable people.

Another challenge I faced was a personal one. As the coordinator of a multi-stakeholder project, I had held a unique and interstitial position, through which I developed an awareness of the complexities surrounding the multiple divisions of ‘insider:outsider’ at a micro-level. Subsequently, I realised the need to reflect on my own positionality. The opportunity to return to the field after a year away, and the research and writing of my Masters dissertation, allowed me the time and space for this.

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

My analysis of the nexus of statelessness, participation and stakeholders revealed that environmental management is a complex domain involving power constellations and competing demands for natural resources as well as equitable benefit sharing. The ability of different stakeholders to communicate their views is a vital component to the process. However, in my research I found that a disjuncture has emerged between marine conservation managers and the stateless Sama Dilaut, a key stakeholder group.

In reality, their vulnerable position as stateless people is driven by various physical, economic, political and social barriers to meaningful participation in natural resource management, all of which overlook the unique aspect of their statelessness. I also exposed the interstitial position of conservation NGOs at ‘brokers’ who mediate in ‘participatory’ processes.

Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why/why not?

Research and writing my Masters dissertation was one of the most rewarding and cathartic periods of my life so far. During the process I reflected on the complex social dynamics and personal dimensions at the locale in which I was involved.  I became enlightened to the many advantages that the inclusion of ethnographic research can bring to conservation and development. I am now fortunate enough to be working with the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, and am deeply committed to elevating statelessness on regional and international platforms, and advocating for the rights of stateless people around the world.

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?

Echoing Dr Jason Tucker, and as identified during the First Global Forum on Statelessness commemorating the 60^th anniversary of the 1954 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, now is a unique and pertinent time to research statelessness from multi-disciplinary perspectives and through a variety of lenses including natural and social sciences. Furthermore, within the Sustainable Development Goals discourse, statelessness raises particular concerns because of the serious ecological threats to our planet, the vulnerabilities associated with statelessness, and the way that inequalities are reinforced by the condition. Following Amal de Chickera’s article, I would also encourage more holistic and ethnographic studies on statelessness by a wide spectrum of researchers (including the stateless themselves) in order to unveil the multitude of human stories behind ‘statelessness’.

UNHCR 2014 Statelessness Research Award interviews... Maria Jose Recalde Vela

"The vulnerability of stateless persons to all sorts of human rights violations made me want to somehow help make their situation a little bit better. What I find so heart-breaking about statelessness is precisely the impact this phenomenon has on the individual’s identity: being told you do not belong in the place you identify with can be devastating, as it can make one question who one really is." 

In this series of blog posts, we are 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 Ms. Maria Jose Recalde Vela whose thesis How can identity assert a claim to citizenship? In search of a safeguard against statelessness from a legal and socio-psychological perspective.  submitted in completion of the Liberal Arts Programme at Tilburg University (the Netherlands), was chosen by the Jury as the Best Research in the Graduate Category.

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

My research was about exploring how a person’s identity develops in relation to the place and groups a person is influenced by (such as the place one grows up in and the society one grows up around) and whether this identity can somehow be used as a safeguard against statelessness.

What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?

I first became interested in the problem of statelessness after taking the course at Tilburg University taught by Dr. van Waas during my second year of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I had never heard of stateless before; until I took the course I never even though there were people in this planet without a nationality! Nationality is something that we take for granted, so it is very shocking to find out that there’s around 10 million people without a nationality. What got me so interested in the issue is that the impact statelessness has on the individual is very deep. Stateless persons are not only deprived of basic civil and political rights such as voting for example, but are also affected at an individual and personal level. I am not sure if research has been done on this, but I am sure that statelessness has a massive impact in the individual’s mental and emotional well-being. The vulnerability of stateless persons to all sorts of human rights violations made me want to somehow help make their situation a little bit better. What I find so heart-breaking about statelessness is precisely the impact this phenomenon has on the individual’s identity: being told you do not belong in the place you identify with can be devastating, as it can make one question who one really is.

Why did you choose this particular research topic?

I always took nationality for granted, but at the same time, I was always confused by it. What was always strange is that I always felt like I am not from one single place, but from every place I have lived in. in my short years, I have lived in a few countries (so far, 4), and every time I moved to a new place I developed an attachment to that place, and I developed a feeling of belonging to that place, even if in paper it was not that way and in paper I have one nationality. I started thinking about this and while I was reading Dr. van Waas’ book I came across a section which describes what the “genuine link” is. The genuine link is the social fact of attachment of an individual with a state, and the genuine link is the basis for nationality. The ICJ described nationality as “a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence.” So in other words, nationality is a legal reflection of this social fact of attachment between individual and state. But state not as in government; state as in, country, homeland, nation-state, etc. A place, a society. Then I started thinking how we develop these social facts of attachment with the places we live in and how this attachment shapes our identities. I felt like my identity has been heavily shaped by every country I have lived in, and this influence the places have had on my identity have contributed to my attachment to these places. I am attached to a place, I feel like I belong there, I have a social fact of attachment to this place. And what is nationality? A reflection of this social fact of attachment. If a person like me has become attached to a place and feels like she belongs there only from having lived a few years there, there is no way any state can tell me that a person who has lived his/her entire life in the same country, many times in the same area, has no social fact of attachment to that country and does not belong there. Many, if not most, stateless persons live their entire lives in the same place for a great number of reasons. However, the challenge for this was that it is not easy to prove a social fact of attachment; it is not something tangible, like a birth certificate for example. A social fact of attachment can mean anything! I thought maybe identity can help solve this problem. However, identity can also be anything! Therefore, I chose to focus on 3 socio-psychological theories that helped me to explain how a person’s identity develops in relation to the place and the society a person grows up in. while doing research, I came across an interesting principle that was proposed by Manley O Hudson: jus connectionis. I had only heard about the jus soli (law of the soil), jus sanguinis (law of blood) and jus domicili (law of residence) for nationality attribution. Jus connectionis? Never heard of it. But it caught my attention. Jus connectionis takes into consideration a person’s connections and identity for determining nationality. Jus connectionis, however, does not have the same status as jus sanguinis, jus soli and jus domicili; it is a theory, a thought, a proposal, an idea. But I thought it was definitely worth looking into, particularly since it could contribute to my search for a safeguard against statelessness.

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 based my research 100% on existing sources; it was a literature review. Carrying out field research on this topic would be very helpful but very complicated due to language barriers and due to the fact that it would take a long time to carry out the interviews and process all the data. Therefore, I based it on all sorts of literature I was able to find. It was challenging to find the literature I needed for it, as you know, there is not much information out there on stateless persons. I was lucky to find some reports in which stateless persons described their feelings of belonging to the place where they had grown up their entire lives.

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

The greatest challenge was definitely finding literature, since there is not much information out there that can give us a clear view into the identities of stateless persons. One of the most difficult parts was reading and actually understanding the socio-psychological theories and being able to explain them in writing. In Liberal Arts and Sciences, I majored in law, so almost every course I took was a law course. Therefore, I was used to reading legal texts and understanding them. However, social sciences texts, particularly social psychology ones were very confusing for me! I took a few social sciences courses during my bachelor, but none on social psychology, so it was very challenging to read and understand the texts. It was also a lot of fun to get to explore an area that I found so interesting but I was very unfamiliar with.

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

-Citizenship is the legal “confirmation” of a person’s belonging to a group; it cannot be determined simply by looking at a person (this is a rejection of ethnicity and race as the basis of citizenship). A “social fact of attachment” must be determined for citizenship to be properly attributed to an individual

-the social fact of attachment is not tangible; it is embedded in the individual’s identity, so it is important to see how this identity developed and what influenced it. The 3 theories of identity can help explain how identity develops in relation to place and group. Our identities are influenced by our surroundings and the people who surround us. It can be said that the development of our identity is influenced by the country we live in.

-the principles of jus soli and jus sanguinis, which are meant to prove membership through birth on the territory or through blood, are unable to prevent people from becoming stateless, due to strict application of these principles by some states. This strict application makes it easy to exclude people from the citizenry, even though many of these excluded persons have social facts of attachment with said state.

-the principle of jus connectionis which takes into account connections and attachment to a place fills this gap left by the jus soli and jus sanguinis principles. Therefore, the principle of jus connectionis, since it takes into account identity, could serve as a safeguard against statelessness for persons who are excluded from the citizenry since they have no legal claims to citizenship through birth or through blood but do have a claim through their social fact of attachment to their homeland.

Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why / why not?

I have found doing research on statelessness—and nationality—the most rewarding experience of my life. I was lucky to intern at the statelessness programme last semester and it was the best, and now I am writing my master thesis on nationality, which I absolutely love. While it focuses on nationality, the idea behind it is finding a new way to help stateless persons. Once you jump on the statelessness train, you won’t be getting off for a long time. There is still so much research to be done that you will never run out of ideas on new things to research on.

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?

Find a topic you find interesting, it will make the process (it’s a long and considerably exhausting process) very enjoyable. I really hope someday someone can go out into the field and carry out interviews to find out more about the identities of the stateless individuals interviewed and maybe use some of the theoretical background I presented in my thesis and use their field results and see what happens! It would be a very large project that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, but if it ever happens I will definitely read that paper! I think in terms of finding concrete solutions for statelessness there is a lot of research that can be done, particularly looking into how specific countries or regions can find concrete solutions for statelessness in their territories or in the region. Theory-wise, there is so much to do! I am fascinated by the theoretical issues. For example finding the “core” of nationality, or finding concrete reasons to why this concept, which was meant to include and bond people over their belonging to a place, actually has left gaps in the law and its implementation that have rendered millions stateless. One of the problems I had was that there is not much literature out there, so any contributions to the literature are always welcome, and from any discipline! I am not an expert but I feel like statelessness cannot be addressed only from only one discipline: it is such a complex issue that it needs contributions from various disciplines for a better understanding of it, and I think that once we understand an issue it is easier to find concrete long-lasting solutions to it.

UNHCR 2014 Statelessness Research Award interviews... Caia Vlieks

"My research experiences during this project have been great. For me it was a perfect combination of doing truly legal research – studying case law of my favorite Court – and at the same time being able to use my own creativity – linking the interpretations of the Court to determination of a person’s statelessness – in order to contribute to the body of knowledge on the issue of statelessness and hopefully help stateless persons in claiming their rights in legal proceedings"

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. Second in the series is Ms. Caia Vlieks, whose masters thesis entitled "A European human rights obligation for statelessness determination?", written in completion of her LLM in International Human Rights Law at Tilburg University (the Netherlands), was chosen by the Jury as the Best Research in the Graduate Category.

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

My research explored whether it is possible to distil an obligation for states to determine a person’s statelessness from the European Convention on Human Rights. More specifically, the research project assessed the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the articles of the Convention that have the clearest links with determination of statelessness. These are Article 3 (the prohibition of torture), Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life), Article 13 (the right to an effective remedy) and Article 14 (the prohibition of torture).

What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?

It was during the first year of my Research Master in Law at Tilburg University that I heard about statelessness. Credits go to the staff of the Statelessness Program at Tilburg University, who actively gave guest lectures during, for instance, a course on human rights law. Initially, my interest for the problem of statelessness focused on stateless Roma, but I learned that there are more groups affected by statelessness. What caught me was the legal limbo stateless persons find themselves in, and the grave consequences that this can have. Also, I discovered that there are many more legal aspects of statelessness have not been the topic of research, making it an even more interesting and deserving of further research.

Why did you choose this particular research topic?

As my knowledge on the topic of statelessness grew, I became fascinated by the definition of a stateless person in international law. This definition says that a stateless person is “a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”. However, only when is established that a stateless person is a stateless person, ergo a stateless person under the aforementioned definition, that person can rely on the specific rights for stateless persons. As such, statelessness determination appears to be prerequisite for enjoyment of specific rights for stateless persons. I therefore decided I wanted to consider statelessness determination in my research. As the European Convention on Human Rights has been a legal document that inspired me throughout my studies, I decided to explore whether this instrument contains an (implicit) obligation for states to determine a person’s statelessness.

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 based my research on case law of the European Court of Human Rights and tried to link existing cases to the issues that stateless persons encounter in their daily lives and which are related to the fact that their statelessness has not been determined/recognized. To be able to do this, I informed myself about the situations of stateless persons, for instance using the ‘Mapping Statelessness in …’-reports of UNHCR. Furthermore, I did not only use case law, but also commentaries on the Convention and the interpretation methods of the Court, as well as commentaries on specific cases. To this end, I conducted a literature and case law searches and studies. I found the more general commentaries on the interpretations of the Court to be particularly helpful, as these could point me to interesting lines of reasoning for my research and landmark cases.

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

The greatest challenge was probably to make a selection of case law and being creative in finding possibilities for linking the Court’s line of reasoning to stateless determination. The amount of case law is overwhelming and it was a challenge not to get lost therein. In this process, the focus of my research on statelessness determination helped me to zoom in on the proper cases.

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

By analyzing the four articles of the Convention with the clearest links to statelessness determination, my research sheds light on whether this Convention obliges states to determine statelessness. First of all, the study shows that statelessness is an issue that is to be taken into account in considerations regarding any of these articles. However, the extent to which varies. For instance, under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, expulsion and removal are issues that trigger an obligation for statelessness determination in particular. In other circumstances, for example involving Article 13, it may be unlikely that the Court obliges a state to really determine statelessness, because the consequences of statelessness can be taken into account without putting a label of ‘statelessness’ on them. Yet, it is important to emphasize that the analysis demonstrates that statelessness can play a role in considerations involving each of the Articles. This evidences that statelessness, and therefore, the determination thereof, is an issue that states should concern all States Parties to the Convention in order to fulfil their obligations under – at least – Articles 3, 8, 13 and 14 thereof.

Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why / why not?

My research experiences during this project have been great. For me it was a perfect combination of doing truly legal research – studying case law of my favorite Court – and at the same time being able to use my own creativity – linking the interpretations of the Court to determination of a person’s statelessness – in order to contribute to the body of knowledge on the issue of statelessness and hopefully help stateless persons in claiming their rights in legal proceedings. What was particularly rewarding was that the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) took an interest in my research. Recently, ENS’s first discussion paper was published, which is based on my Master’s Thesis. It deals with possibilities for litigating for the obligation to determine statelessness under the European Convention on Human Rights. I am very grateful for this, as my research will now reach even more people working on the issue of statelessness, including persons who litigate on behalf of stateless persons.

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?

When doing legal research like I did, I sometimes felt that I was working a bit far from practice – what stateless persons experience in their daily lives – and it made me wonder whether my research could truly contribute to a better life for them. I therefore think it is important to remember that statelessness is an issue that affects over 10 million people around the globe, and that all types of innovative and creative research, also legal research, are most welcome if we want to protect them and, in the end, eradicate statelessness.

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. 

UNHCR Statelessness Research Award interviews... Amanda Cheong

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. Last in the series is Ms Amanda Cheong, whose B.A. Honours thesis entitled "Changing Conceptions of Citizenship Among Stateless Chinese-Bruneian Immigrants in Vancouver", written at the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia (Canada), was chosen by the Jury as the Best Research in the Undergraduate Category.

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

My project had two main goals:

     1)      To depict statelessness as an embodied, lived experience by providing a descriptive account of the material and emotional repercussions faced by stateless Chinese-Bruneians;

     2)      To demonstrate how Brunei’s and Canada’s citizenship policies differentially mediated the nature of stateless Chinese-Bruneian immigrants’ ideas of citizenship and their relationships to the state.

      2.       What first got you interested in the problem of statelessness?

It wasn’t until the springtime before the final year of my undergraduate degree when I discovered that my parents had grown up without citizenship in the country in which they were born.  They mentioned this fact offhandedly when we were shopping for snacks one evening in an Asian wholesale grocery store. I pressed them further and asked, “So if you didn’t have citizenship, what did your passport say under ‘nationality’?” My mother replied matter-of-factly, “Stateless.” This moment marked a paradigm shift in the way I understood citizenship, as I could no longer took for granted the assumption that everyone automatically legally belonged somewhere. Thus, my professional commitment to the issue of statelessness arose out of deeply personal origins.

      3.       Why did you choose this particular research topic?

Ever since I learned about my family’s stateless history, I became both surprised at how little research has been conducted on statelessness to date, and fascinated about its human, subjective dimensions. What is being stateless like on an everyday basis? How do stateless people make sense of ideas of national identity and belonging?

There had been no prior attempts to systematically document the lives of the stateless Chinese in Brunei. The struggles of this particular population have been so chronically ignored that many of my interview respondents themselves questioned why I decided to pick Chinese-Bruneians, out of all the different cases that exist.  So I decided to study this population to not only make an academic contribution to the body of literature on statelessness, but also to demonstrate that the worth of no individual—regardless of how marginalized, forgotten or invisible—should be discounted.

      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 oral history interviews with formerly stateless Chinese-Bruneian immigrants living in the Greater Vancouver Area. It was a challenging but gratifying experience, and I hope that the respondents also got something out of sharing their lives and histories with me.

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

My biggest challenge was reconciling my multiple identities and biases as researcher, activist, and daughter of formerly stateless immigrants.

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

I found that while Brunei’s racialized citizenship policies restricted its stateless population to a predominantly instrumental understanding of citizenship as related to material entitlements, Canada’s more inclusionary model fostered a greater orientation towards symbolic notions of freedom, democratic participation, and civic engagement.

In addition to initiating the research and documentation of this little-known population, I also shed light upon the importance of citizenship policies in influencing how individuals conceive of themselves as civic beings and contribute to the political life of a nation, and how such ideas have the potential to shift through the migration process.

      7.       Have you found it rewarding to research statelessness – why / why not?

Definitely, and I am determined to continue working in this newly emerging field. My goal as an aspiring sociologist is to give a human face to the global crisis of statelessness, and to use scholarly inquiry to effect change at both community and policy levels.

      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?

I don’t know if I have any tips to share, as I am still a student who is learning more about statelessness, and trying to equip myself with the theoretical and methodological tools to study populations who legally do not exist. One thing I would say is that it is important to remember that, at the end of the day, statelessness is a fundamentally human issue that affects the everyday lives of real individuals, and to approach your research with an open and compassionate mind.

**

I wish to acknowledge my mother and father, formerly stateless immigrants now living in Canada, who inspire me every single day with their strength and perseverance in the face of impossible adversity. 

Amanda's research interests concern collective action and rights claims among stateless peoples, as well as related issues of migration, race/ethnicity, and nation-building. In September 2012, she began a research and documentary film project with Voice of the Children (www.voc.org.my), a child rights legal advocacy organization in Malaysia. Through fieldwork in urban and rural contexts, she explored how racialized discourses surrounding Malaysian nationality contribute to the legal and social marginalization of undocumented and stateless children in Sabah. Amanda is now a PhD student in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton University. She can be reached at archeong@princeton.edu.