or other travel document from the Sri Lankan authorities.163 Some religious organisations or legal assistance groups will also provide assistance in contacting consular authorities. It would not be correct, therefore, to say that all irregular migrants in West Africa without papers who are transiting through or living and working in a country not their own are stateless as a result. Nevertheless, in other regions of the world, research into immigration detention has found many cases of stateless persons who have spent months incarcerated simply because they cannot prove their nationality and regularise their immigration status and there is no country to which they can be deported.164 It is likely that there are many similar potential cases in the West African context, but the less systematic nature of immigration control means that they are able to resolve an immediate situation of difficulty and disappear from official view. Nonetheless, some cases come to light. In Nigeria for example, a man of Libyan origin, resident in Nigeria since the 1970s, and his son by a Nigerian wife, spent nine months in immigration detention in 2013-14 after being detained (in an atmosphere of heightened security over terrorism) because he had no identity document, having lost his Libyan passport several years before. Repeated applications to the Libyan embassy in Abuja had brought no confirmation of Libyan nationality; and in the absence of a procedure for identifying them as stateless persons the immigration service did not know how to process their case. It was only by chance that the case came to the national refugee commission, which negotiated their release from detention and facilitated an application for naturalisation as Nigerian citizens.165 The children of migrants are more at risk, especially in those countries that provide no rights at all based on birth in the country, even if the person remains resident there until majority and beyond. Differences in the law have a real impact. In those countries that follow the double jus soli system, the courts responsible for issuing certificates of nationality understand and apply the rules to the second generation born in the country. A person born in Senegal or Niger, for example, of one parent also born in that country will, even if subject to a degree of instinctive discrimination, be able to establish his or her nationality. However, the children born in the country of those who themselves migrated have no access to nationality; only the grandchildren become nationals. Where only citizenship by descent is provided for, such as in Côte d’Ivoire or Nigeria, it can be impossible for the descendants of those who have migrated from another country (or even another area of the same country), however many generations ago, to become recognised as nationals, leaving them excluded from full enjoyment of civil, political, economic and social rights. In theory, of course, these children will mostly have access to the nationality of their parents who migrated; in practice, establishing that nationality may be next to impossible for those who do not have resources (material and social) to assert their claim. In Guinea, by contrast, where the nationality law provides that a person who is born in Guinea automatically acquires Guinean nationality on reaching majority if still resident there, officials share this interpretation of the law (even if imperfectly understood) and papers are obtainable by those 163 Manya Ghahremani, Irregular Sri Lankan Migrants in West Africa: Frustrated Dreams, Major Hardship and Hopes for a Better Future: An Analysis of Migration Patterns and Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration Services, IOM, June 2013. 164 Unravelling Anomaly: Detention, Discrimination and the Protection Needs of Stateless Persons, London: Equal Rights Trust, 2010. 165 Interview, Nigerian National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, Abuja, July 2014. 51