Statelessness As A Lack Of Functioning Citizenship 131 the protection of that country.’12 This situation has traditionally been linked to the notion of effective nationality, and it is notable that some legal experts tasked with defining de facto statelessness believe that similar circumstances can occur within one’s country of nationality.13 These individuals face situations similar to de jure statelessness, but there are no legally-binding protections for the de facto stateless within the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.14 Globalized categories of membership are based – in large part – on one’s ability to access functioning citizenship. Legal nationality is not particularly useful for human rights protection, for instance, if a state is too weak to ensure human security. Individuals connected to failed states – states that have lost control of their territories, legitimate authority, and the ability to provide basic services such as access to clean water and basic education – may hold legal nationality but cannot rely on the state as their duty-bearer of human rights. In these cases, weak and failed states face a ‘sovereignty gap’ in which the sovereignty they are afforded by the international community does not accurately reflect an ability to provide the rights and protections afforded by citizenship.15 In response to such political crises (as well as economic push factors), many individuals undertake ‘illegal’ migration and often expose themselves to situations of de facto statelessness that severely limit their ability to access basic human rights. They are located in zones of semi-citizenship, in sites ‘more akin to a spatially rescaled conception of the state than to clear-cut distinctions between two sides of a territorial border.’16 Unable to access functioning citizenship at home, these individuals seek out opportunity and security elsewhere – only to take on the burden of de facto statelessness in countries where they are often unable to access rights protections due to their fear of incarceration, deportation, and perhaps even physical abuse as a result of their undocumented migration status. 12 13 14 15 16 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘Expert Meeting – The Concept of Statelessness under International Law (‘Prato Conclusions’)’ (2010) < http://www.refworld .org/docid/4ca1ae002.html> accessed 19 October 2013. Ibid. The UNHCR’s refugee mandate covers the de facto stateless who qualify for refugee status, however. Massey (2010) recommends that the Office needed to clarify ‘the scope and content of its mandate for the identification, prevention and/or reduction of de facto statelessness, and/or for the protection of de facto stateless persons’ (66). Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (OUP 2009) 3. Anne McNevin, Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political (Columbia University Press 2011) 3. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 127-135