Statelessness, governance, and the problem of citizenship

Description

When a person is not recognised as a citizen anywhere, they are typically referred to as ‘stateless’. This can give rise to challenges both for individuals and for the institutions that try to govern them. Statelessness, governance, and the problem of citizenship breaks from tradition by relocating the ‘problem’ to be addressed from one of statelessness to one of citizenship. It problematises the governance of citizenship – and the use of citizenship as a governance tool – and traces the ‘problem of citizenship’ from global and regional governance mechanisms to national and even individual levels. With contributions from activists, affected persons, artists, lawyers, academics, and national and international policy experts, this volume rejects the idea that statelessness and stateless persons are a problem. It argues that the reality of statelessness helps to uncover a more fundamental challenge: the problem of citizenship. Front matter Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Notes on contributors Acknowledgements A Stateless Poem Introduction: Opening a conversation about statelessness, governance, and the problem of citizenship Part I: Producing and maintaining statelessness Figure 1 New Democracy II The problem of citizenship in global governance ‘Fonua’ cultural statelessness in the Pacific and the effects of climate change A regional politics of foreignness and Pakistan’s Afghan refugees The statelessness of refugees Figure 2 Dissolution of the moonbeam union Statelessness and the administrative state: The legal prowess of the first-line bureaucrat in Malaysia Language and statelessness: The impact of political discourses on the Bidoon community in Kuwait The weaponisation of citizenship: Punishment, erasure, and social control Statelessness and governance in the absence of recognition: The case of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ Legal identity and rebel governance: A comparative perspective on lived consequence of contested sovereignty Part II: Living with the problem of citizenship Figure 3 Obsession Transnational surrogacy, biocitizenship, and statelessness: India’s response to the ‘ghosts of the republic’ The birth certificate as fetish object in the governance of citizenship and its presumed sex and gender norms Seeking ‘a right to belong’: A stateless Shan youth’s journey to citizenship in northern Thailand Being excluded or excluding yourself?: Citizenship choices among the stateless youth in Estonia Figure 4 Letter Statelessness and governance at the periphery: ‘Nomadic’ populations and the modern state in Thailand, Côte d’Ivoire, and Lebanon Ageing and stateless: Non- decisionism and state violence across temporal and geopolitical space from Bhutan to the United States Asking the ‘other questions’: Applying intersectionality to understand statelessness in Europe Part III: Rethinking governance Figure 5 I don’t recognize me in the shadows The ethics of quantifying statelessness Registering persons at risk of statelessness in Kenya: Solutions or further problems? Too little too late? Naturalisation of stateless Kurds and transitional justice in Syria Statelessness elimination through legal fiction: The United Arab Emirates’ Comorian minority Figure 6 All faces Supra-national jurisprudence: Necessary but insufficient to contest statelessness in the Dominican Republic Civil society advocacy to address statelessness: Using norms to promote progress on the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness The construction of a Brazilian ‘hospitality policy’ and the adoption of a new legal framework for stateless persons Ideological governance of citizen and non-citizen others in Kuwait ‘We are not stateless! You can call us what you like, but we are citizens of Myanmar!’: Rohingya resistance and the stateless label United Stateless in the United States: Reflections from an activist Figure 7 We are not immigrants Index