2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) often start with the ‘right to a nationality’ guaranteed in the UDHR and within international law (international relations/law). 10 We regularly cite Hannah Arendt’s ‘the right to have rights’ 11 and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’ 12 (political science), and we look back at the Holocaust as a stark example of how statelessness denies people the barest of state protections (history). More recently, a range of social scientists  political theorists, sociologists and anthropologists  increasingly argue that citizenship goes far beyond mere legal status to encompass a broader membership in political community. 13 Beyond the traditional scope of academia, journalists and artists contribute to our knowledge of statelessness in diverse ways and help the issue emerge within the international community in the process. Documentary photographer Greg Constantine, for instance, is the most recognisable chronicler of statelessness worldwide. His attention to the Rohingya is highlighted in the project Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya, 14 and his work with this stateless population continues in the wake of forced displacement stemming from the 2017 violence. Just as interdisciplinarity strengthens human rights research and education, so too does it benefit our work on the issue of statelessness. While it remains deeply rooted in law and international politics, we cannot fully understand its causes or consequences without engaging from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. We must avoid the pitfall, so common among academic communities, of isolating ourselves in disciplinary bubbles and failing to collaborate with those whose training and perspectives differ from our own. This is the part where I sheepishly look toward my fellow statelessness researchers and advocates, feeling a bit guilty for raining on the ‘statelessness party’ we are all so eager to participate in. And not only when it comes to considering it as a new field of study. As my colleagues declare statelessness as ‘a concept whose time has come’ 15 and argue that ‘all signs point to statelessness being an issue that is now here to stay on the international human rights agenda’, 16 I contend that we are still stuck in a situation of ‘partial issue emergence’ without widespread, non-elite recognition). 17 My hesitation to embrace a separate field of ‘statelessness studies’ does not mean that I disregard the incredible advocacy work that went into the creation of new organisations and publications. Nor do I disagree with the assertion that statelessness deserves extensive, sustained scholarship. Rather, I see statelessness as an issue worthy of our attention because of its intricate connection to other political and social concerns. Statelessness is nothing 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UN GAOR, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948) art 15. See generally Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace & Co 1951). See generally Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Daniel Heller-Roazen tr, Stanford University Press 1998). See, eg, Kelly Staples, Retheorising Statelessness: A Background Theory of Membership in World Politics (Edinburgh UP 2012); Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Philip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017). Greg Constantine, Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya (Nowhere People 2012). See also Greg Constantine, ‘Nowhere People’ <www.nowherepeople.org>. Michelle Foster and Hélène Lambert, ‘Statelessness as a Human Rights Issue: A Concept Whose Time Has Come’ (2016) 28(4) International Journal of Refugee Law 564, 584. Laura van Waas, ‘“Are We There Yet?” The Emergence of Statelessness on the International Human Rights Agenda’ (2014) 32 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 342, 346. Lindsey N Kingston, ‘Conceptualizing Statelessness as a Human Rights Challenge: Framing, Visual Representation, and (Partial) Issue Emergence’ (2019) 11(1) Journal of Human Rights Practice 52. 168