Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration Vol. 7 No. 2 statelessness probable stands in contrast to UNHCR (2014: 35) guidance on the determination of statelessness, which emphasises that statelessness should only have to be established to a ‘reasonable degree’. The demand that the applicant makes their claim probable is compounded by the fact that the burden of proof lies, by and large, with the applicant themselves, in contrast to UNHCR guidance on the shared burden of proof in establishing statelessness.10 Increasing the barriers faced by some refugees in proving their statelessness in Sweden, the SMA place restrictions on the use of documentation issued by certain states or authorities. This includes documents from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Eritrea and those carried by ‘stateless Palestinians’ (Migrationsverket, 2016b). All of these are countries or authorities with known stateless populations or with nationality law, or the implementation thereof, which sees the creation and perpetuation of statelessness. It is unclear therefore how a stateless person from one of these states, even if they could provide documentation indicating they were stateless, would be able to make their statelessness probable. With regard to the material available to SMA caseworkers in their decision making beyond what the applicant provides and their own knowledge, they can draw on several other sources. This includes country of origin information on the LIFOS database, other external sources and language analysis for the determination of country of origin. Caseworkers can also turn to either the Migration Handbook, produced and continuously updated by the SMA, legal positions made by the legal team of the SMA, or rulings by the Migration Court of Appeal. The Migration Handbook, at the time of analysis, did not include a definition of a stateless person, a person with “unknown citizenship” or those whose citizenship was “under investigation” (Migrationsverket, 2015). In addition, as of October 2016, there were only twenty-seven legal positions with a reference to statelessness from the SMA available to caseworkers for guidance on statelessness assessment (LIFOS, 2016). While these detail law and policy positions on individual cases of stateless Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as well as how to record country of origin on stateless refugees’ applications for a residence permit, no actual detail regarding how statelessness, “unknown citizenship” or citizenship “under investigation” are to be identified or categorised was given. With regard to the past decisions of the Migration Court of Appeal, based on a review as of October 2016, this only related to individual cases and did not provide comprehensive guidance on how statelessness should be identified in the asylum procedure. important for asylum seekers to be made aware that they should raise their statelessness, or their perceived risk of statelessness, during the application procedure. There are also practices in other states, such as Spain, where ex officio initiation of stateless determination occurs (see Gyulai, 2012). This could be useful in cases where the applicant is unaware that they are stateless, but through the information the applicant has provided, the SMA may identify that the applicant is as at risk of statelessness and launch a determination. 10 The SMA note in their guidance to asylum seekers (which is similar for non-asylum migrants): ‘It is your responsibility to prove your identity. This means that you must present documents that prove what your name is, when you were born and your citizenship. This document must also include a photograph and be issued by an authorised authority’. [Emphasis added] (Migrationsverket, 2016f). Detailed guidance on how to implement a shared burden of proof has been set out by UNHCR (2014) and good and bad practices can be drawn on from other states who have implemented statelessness determination procedures. Essentially it is very similar to the shared burden of proof between the applicant and the authorities in establishing the need for protection as a refugee, and could easily be incorporated into the Swedish asylum procedure. 26