2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) Although resignation may not be the whole of the story when considering that everyday forms of resistance may have been left unaccounted for, it nonetheless has important implications for the concept of dissensus and raises the question of whether this concept has much purchase when applied to real-world scenarios. Again, rights belong to individuals ‘when they can do something with them to construct a dissensus against the denial of rights they suffer’, 154 that is, to dispute the social consensus that sees one’s rights denied. Yet, if we return once more to the hegemonic social and political systems that preclude some from accessing nonestate schools and employment while convincing others that they are not entitled to non-estate healthcare, education and employment, or to participation in the political process while recalling that these systems remain unchallenged, it is clear that these individuals do not have the rights they have as guaranteed to them by the ‘inscriptions of the community as free and equal’. 155 In other words, the rural rights deficit outlined above brings into full view ‘the contradictions of a social order which presupposes equality but simultaneously disavows it’. 156 And again, this study has produced little to no evidence of rural respondents mobilising to secure that which has been guaranteed to them by way of dissensus, meaning that at the moment of analysis, many were unable to seize their rights despite constitutional guarantees. For those who have not taken such action, such as those discussed in this Part, the acquisition of Sri Lankan citizenship is little else than a hollow inscription of equality and will remain as a site of either dormant or active struggle, contestation and negotiation for as long as these individuals remain without the rights they have. CONCLUSION On 15 November 1948, Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population was rendered stateless, though because the realisation of one’s human rights is contingent on one’s political status as a citizen, this population had effectively lost the right to have rights. Specifically, because nationality is a prerequisite for accessing political and judicial processes and for claiming economic, social and cultural rights, statelessness is a matter of unparalleled concern for those who have been rendered as such. Fortunately, some 55 years later, on 11 November 2003, this situation was finally resolved, thereby remedying that predicament confronting all stateless persons alike: the absence of any legal identity to which no formal recognition by any state is owed, and all that this entails. For this reason, it would not be unjustified to presume that this population would be entitled to the entire gamut of human rights guaranteed by the state, yet for many among Sri Lanka’s previously stateless Up-Country Tamils, recently acquired Sri Lankan citizenship is largely nominal, operating to mask the continued marginalisation of this population and deflect attention from an enduring human rights deficit believed to have been resolved. Though it would be absurd to condemn in any way the conferment of citizenship to this once stateless population, unfettered celebration of this landmark development alongside declarations of ending statelessness in Sri Lanka as a success are perhaps as equally absurd given that such ceremony obscures the day-to-day realities confronted by many in this community, making statelessness and citizenship in the Up-Country a twice-told tale. Granted, it was 154 Rancière, ‘Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ (n 19) 305–6. 155 ibid 302. 156 Rancière, On the Shores of Politics (n 25) 9. 34