Pathways to statelessness: Denationalisation and the denial of personhood
legitimising their future unequal treatment: they are not only excluded, but their exclusion is further used
to deny them equal access to rights, welfare and other resources. In the second situation, as exemplified
by Myanmar and various European countries, the aims are more subtle and therefore more difficult to
observe: in both cases, the aim is to deny protection, increase vulnerability of the stateless population in
the global sphere, and make their future citizen association with any country highly unlikely. Myanmar’s
expulsion policies that were carefully crafted to limit access to valid documents, have made the
identification of the Rohingya and subsequent granting of the refugee status in Bangladesh and beyond
extremely hard, which bears negative effects to their path to any citizenship in the future. Particular
European citizenship revocation policies create invisible statelessness by exposing their former citizens
to uncertain destinies (because their attachments, as explained above, to their other country of citizenship
are weak). Even though European policies, unlike those explored in the case studies, target individuals
rather than groups, the increasing number of countries that have recently introduced them and the rising
number of cases will eventually create a substantive group of people without attachments to any existing
state.
Many practices discussed in the case studies and in this comment do not align easily with the
international legal definition of statelessness. Nevertheless, recognizing them as shades of statelessness
and pathways to the status of full statelessness helps us identify the dynamics of exclusion, its aims, and
outcomes. Statelessness, when understood in this wider sense, is more than a status, but a complex set
of relations and interactions which impacts negatively one’s personhood and future life opportunities.
European University Institute
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