130 Kingston an incomplete process. ‘There are, in fact, still a number of citizens’ rights dressed up as human rights.’7 Rather than marking the declining importance of state citizenship, data suggests that aspects of globalization are actually increasing the individual’s need for legal recognition. Statelessness and irregular citizenship status (including undocumented migration) have been linked to increased vulnerabilities to a range of human rights violations, including the inability to access one’s basic ‘right to health,’8 to cross borders legally, and even the right to stay in one’s country of origin.9 These vulnerabilities are exacerbated by globalized security concerns, which increase an individual’s need for government-issued documentation in order to access a range of rights.10 Legal nationality is often an essential prerequisite for the protection and enjoyment of a wide range of human rights, yet status alone cannot guarantee rights protection. It is noteworthy that the international system currently equates citizenship with membership, while scholars such as Kelly Staples caution us not to automatically limit political membership to citizenship. Staples instead focuses on the relationship between inclusion and exclusion, as well as the way that ‘individuality is constituted and constrained within international relations.’11 From this perspective, functioning citizenship is not something that can be proven with a passport. Rather, functioning citizenship signifies membership in a political community; membership that provides individuals with identity and human rights protections. 3 Semi-Citizenship and de facto Statelessness Cohen’s concept of ‘semi-citizenship’ provides a new frame for assessing de facto statelessness, when individuals are ‘outside the country of their nationality [and] are unable or, for valid reasons, are unwilling to avail themselves of 7 8 9 10 11 Laura van Waas, ‘Nationality and rights’ in Brad K. Blitz and Maureen Lynch (eds), Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality (Edward Elgar 2011) 26. Lindsey N. Kingston, Elizabeth F. Cohen, and Christopher P. Morley, ‘Limitations on Universality: The “Right to Health” and the Necessity of Legal Nationality’ [2010] 10(11) BMC Health and International Human Rights. Steffen Mau, ‘Mobility Citizenship, Inequality, and the Liberal State’ [2010] 4(4) International Political Sociology. See: John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (CUP 2000). Kelly Staples, Retheorising Statelessness: A Background Theory of Membership in World Politics (Edinburgh University Press 2012) 2. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 127-135