The status and rights of noncitizens represent a special conundrum for scholarly disciplines ranging from political science to sociology and intersecting with sociolegal studies. A substantial (and growing) body of literature addresses the position of those noncitizens that countries have the obligation to protect under international law: refugees. Yet scholars, as well as policy makers, have up until recently given less attention to the noncitizenship position par excellence: statelessness. There has been only a handful of scientific monographs dedicated to the question of statelessness, in comparison to the status of refugees, despite the fact that stateless persons also belong to a noncitizenship category protected by international law (Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness). While in 2014, the UNHCR launched an #IBelong campaign and Global Action Plan to End Statelessness, a theoretical consideration of what statelessness represents for people who find themselves in such a position was still missing. This gap was tackled profoundly by the recently published monograph entitled Understanding Statelessness edited by Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Philip Cole.
This monograph published in the Routledge Studies on Human Rights signals a new turn in the study of statelessness. First, it clearly indicates that the question of statelessness needs to be approached from an interdisciplinary sociolegal perspective. All the chapters in the edited volume show how the social phenomena of statelessness goes beyond the scope of the legal definition of a stateless person as one “who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law”. Second, the book as a whole takes a theoretically innovative advance by questioning whether the current actions taken to address statelessness are the best way forward. They confirm that while in many cases statelessness is related to the violations of human rights, they doubt that there is an inherent connection between the two. The position of certain stateless populations (such as the Russian speakers in Latvia and Estonia) show that lacking citizenship does not necessarily translate into lacking a “right to have rights” as famously stated by Hannah Arendt, who undoubtedly laid the first theoretical foundation of statelessness studies.
The chapters in this edited volume are extremely well-connected (not lumped together artificially as in some edited volumes): they speak to each other and all convey the basic idea of the book as a whole. The book is divided into three parts: Defining statelessness, Living statelessness, and Theorizing statelessness. The first part deals with issues arising from the concept of statelessness itself. Lindsey Kingston argues that ending statelessness by acquisition of citizenship does not necessarily terminate the discrimination that many stateless groups (especially marginalized minorities) suffer. In Kingston's words “legal status is only one step in a long journey towards full rights protection” (17). In the following chapter, by analyzing individual cases of statelessness, Caia Vlieks shows that the distinction between the statelessness in a migratory context and statelessness in situ (in one's own country) can be very blurred. Hence, it can be implausible to formulate policies for the two contexts separately. Similarly, in their chapter entitled Unpacking statelessness Amal de Chickera and Laura van Waas, conclude that both de jure and de facto stateless persons (i.e., being at risk of statelessness) must be given effective citizenship. They commendably compare effective citizenship with a child's right to education: it is not simply enough that a child is included in within the education system, the question is the quality of her/his inclusion (59). The first part of the book concludes with a chapter by Brad Blitz that theoretically reconsiders Hannah Arendt's legacy to statelessness studies. Blitz contests two of Arendt's claims: first, that statelessness equates with rightlessness; second, that states in today's world are necessarily the guarantors of rights, when studies show that they might be the reasons for the same rights to be denied.
The second part of the book illustrates the lived experiences of statelessness. Zahra Al Barazi and Jason Tucker highlight the complex shades of statelessness in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region: from minorities such as Palestinians and Kurds to stateless groups by definition such as Bidoons. Tucker and Al Barazi observe that while lived experiences of statelessness might be different, they argue that stateless populations still need to overcome the disunity in facing a common challenge. The subsequent chapter, by Jillian Blake, describes how racism coupled with changing citizenship policies created a new group of stateless Haitians. The description of statelessness in ungoverned spaces in Kenya in the next chapter (by Oscar Gakuo Mwangi) indicates that there can be a direct link between living in a limbo and security: since stateless people cannot receive protection and access to social services by the state they are an easier target for the recruitment of extremist (terrorist) groups, who provide alternatives. On the other hand, in her chapter, Tendayi Bloom shows that in certain cases, Indigenous groups contest acquiring citizenship of the state where they live as a protest against the colonization of their territory. Bloom argues that such contestation should not lead to the absence of the rights attached to a citizenship status.
Finally, the third part of the books calls for re-theorizing of statelessness. It calls for decoupling citizenship status from human rights protection and argues that human rights protection should precede citizenship status (Katja Swider). It shows the cases of how rights can be granted on the basis of belonging to a city such as London and Toronto (David Passarelli), and also the intrinsic connection between the rights to family and protection of stateless children (Patti Tamara Lenard). The last two chapters represent a novel theoretical synthesis on how to tackle statelessness. Katherine Tonkiss argues that citizenship and nationality need to be decoupled as synonyms. In her view, as long as statelessness is only solvable by membership of a “national” community, it will still produce the discrimination that led to statelessness in the first instance. The final chapter by Phillip Cole emphasizes the need for a radical theory of statelessness that does not see the statelessness itself as a problem, but rather the binary between outsiders and insiders.
Understanding Statelessness embodies an intellectually brave and theoretically unprecedented outlook on statelessness. The book shows that statelessness can only be fully comprehended when studied in different social contexts, not solely in legal terms. Yet it also demonstrates that the role of a scholar is not to be limited by an existent social and legal context, but also to think outside the given box. This was certainly accomplished in this edited volume.
