Even where the law seeks to ostensibly facilitate access to citizenship for certain stateless people, the problem of establishing identity remains. For example, those who can naturalise through a notification procedure, rather than through the application procedure, have to be 1) aged between 18 to 21 years old, 2) be stateless, 3) have been in Sweden since they were 15 and 4) hold a permanent residence permit. The applicant must have held a permanent residence permit at the age of 15 to qualify, therefore if their identity had yet to be established at this time, they would not qualify for naturalisation by notification, and would have to go through the more demanding naturalisation by application (Migrationsverket, 2016e). Similarly, it is unclear how the applicant would prove they are stateless, given the lack of statelessness determination procedure and the lack of mechanisms to appeal the incorrect assessment of nationality by the SMA. Section 12 of the Act on Swedish Citizenship foresees the potential barriers some people may face in proving their identity when applying for naturalisation, allowing for exceptions if the person has been a domiciled in Sweden for eight years and the information about their identity is credible (UNCHR, 2016). Any period of time the applicant has spent in Sweden with an incorrect identity is not counted towards the period of residency (Bernitz, 2013). Given that stateless refugees cannot appeal decisions about their identity, this can lead to a situation of prolonged statelessness if the SMA have incorrectly assessed the person’s statelessness. The Temporary Asylum Law in 2015 Temporary restriction on the possibility of being granted a permanent residence permit in Sweden came into force in late 2015. Previously anyone granted a residence permit as a refugee, as a person in need of subsidiary protection or as a person otherwise in need of protection, before the 20th of July 2016 received a permanent residence permit (Migrationsverket, 2016d). From this date however, those in need of protection as refugees only receive temporary residence permits valid for three years. 9 There are exceptions to this rule however. Unaccompanied minors and families with children under the age of 18 who are in need of protection are still to be granted permanent residence permits if they submitted an application for asylum before the 24th of November 2015. With regard to the extension of the temporary residence permits the SMA state that “If the person still has grounds for protection when their residence permit expires, they can be granted an extension of their 9 Those who are granted subsidiary protection receive a permit for 13 months, extended from the original 12 months to allow for access to certain social services, though they are not within the scope of this research.