‘Rainbow Statelessness’ LGBTIQ+ persons. In academia, a scoping of the issue has been noticeably absent. Indeed, as a researcher attending conferences on statelessness over the last decade, I have observed how consideration of SOGIESC has repeatedly been left off the agenda. This was further noted at an expert roundtable on ‘statelessness, gender and intersectionality’ at the 2019 World Conference on Statelessness in The Hague. 9 The absence of critical consideration of the connections between SOGIESC and statelessness has left the question of a possible nexus unexplored. I think there is so little attention to this intersection because we are taboo everywhere. Yet it is a chronic violation of human rights that is not even being discussed. 10 This article argues that a SOGIESC–statelessness nexus does very much exist, with LGBTIQ+ stateless persons experiencing the resultant complexities across the world’s continents. The effects manifest variously as individuals navigate administrative and judicial processes, security apparatuses and their everyday lives within and across legal jurisdictions. Before delving into an exploration of the nexus itself, this article first considers possible reasons for the relative lack of academic attention that has to date been shown to ‘rainbow statelessness’ — that is, statelessness intersecting with SOGIESC. It proposes a two-part explanation linked to the respective focuses of the main disciplinary areas that might have been expected to cover such an issue: namely the discourses around ‘sexual citizenship’ on the one hand and the relatively new discipline of statelessness studies on the other. These two fields of academia have operated largely in isolation, with each generating its own body of literature discrete from the other. The non-intersection between the two fields has resulted in: i) a lack of consideration of statelessness by those working outside disciplines dominated by legal approaches; and ii) a lack of intersectional approaches that go beyond the legislative frames dominant within statelessness studies. In contrast, there is a comparatively rich literature emerging at the intersection between queer theory/sexual citizenship and refugee studies, with growing attention now being paid to the intersectional experiences of LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers and refugees in various contexts around the world. 11 The four-year research project ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum (SOGICA): A European Human Rights Challenge’, which is run by the University of Sussex (United Kingdom), has also produced a significant number of academic outputs exploring LGBTIQ+ experiences within the European asylum process. 12 9 10 11 12 ‘Statelessness, Gender and Intersectionality: Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of Who Is Stateless, Why and What This Means for Our Work’ (Roundtable, World Conference on Statelessness, 26–28 June 2019). This roundtable was proposed by the European Network on Statelessness: World Conference on Statelessness Report 2019: Building a Global Movement (Report, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion 10 December 2019) 12 <https://files.institutesi.org/World_Conference_on_Statelessness_Report_2019.pdf>. Interview with Eliana Rubashkyn (Thomas McGee, 8 January 2020), an intersex person from Colombia who spent years as a stateless person. See, for example, the special issue entitled: ‘Queer Migration, Asylum, and Displacement’ (2016) 17(8) Sexualities. See also Emily Kofoed, ‘Queering Images of Citizenship: Rhetoric, Representation and LGBTI Refugees’ (PhD Dissertation, Georgia State University, 8 December 2016); Senthorun Raj, 'A/Effective Adjudications: Queer Refugees and the Law' (2017) 37(4) Journal of Intercultural Studies 453. Project website: SOGICA (Web Page) <http://www.sogica.org/en/>. 66