2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) interviewees, it is poverty that precludes them from access to non-estate schools because the finances needed to cover the costs of transportation to said schools are unavailable. However, it is because these communities are so remote that the cost of transportation is so high. Of course, an increase in household income would provide the finances needed to meet such costs. Yet, opportunities to secure formal employment outside the estate either do not exist, or the cost of transportation to pursue such opportunities and by extension increase household income prohibits people from doing so. Thus, the inability to pursue non-estate education remains. In short, poverty and physical isolation combine to limit one’s options in the fields of education and employment, and in this way the right to education and the right to work are never fully realised. Additionally, alienation from the political process, which is itself indicative of a political rights deficit, marks the more rural regions of the Up-Country. In this way, there is little opportunity for rural Up-Country Tamil citizenry to voice their concerns on matters of education and employment and challenge the reigning rights deficit. Because the right to education, employment and political participation are without full realisation in the more rural regions of the Up-Country, 133 recently acquired Sri Lankan citizenship is largely nominal with respect to these rights insofar as legal recognition before the state has brought with it little substantive benefit in terms of access and entitlement to education, employment and political participation 14 years on from having acquired citizenship. 2 Belonging in Place As the interviews have revealed, at least four of those consulted are of the view that they have no place outside the estate, while another significant few have elected not to involve themselves with matters beyond their respective estate. This suggests that the plantation boundary limits the choices and opportunities available to some or that others do not feel as though they are welcome in the world beyond the estate. As stated by Kathlene Mee and Sarah Wright, ‘belonging connects matter to place, through various practices of boundary making and inhabitation which signal that a particular collection of objects, animals, plants, germs, people, practices, performances, or ideas is meant “to be” in a place’. 134 This understanding of belonging is in keeping with the Up-Country Tamils as belonging to Sri Lanka, and specifically the Up-Country, given that this region of the country has been self-identified as their place and one that spatially and symbolically links this population to Sri Lanka. Further, there is no one way of belonging as it is possible ‘to belong in many different ways at many different scales’. 135 For this reason, the Up-Country Tamil population can again be said to belong to the Up-Country and to one another as a group. However, it is precisely because there are different ways and scales of belonging that some do not belong to a world beyond the estate. Put 133 The rights deficits observed in Dickoya coupled with the overwhelming belief that the acquisition of citizenship has been of little benefit also recorded in Dickoya signal the need for more comparative research to be conducted on this plantation and those in the Dickoya region with plantations in other regions of Central and Uva provinces to determine whether the findings on Dickoya are an aberration, or genuinely reflect how people qualify citizenship in the more rural regions of the Up-Country. 134 Kathleen Mee and Sarah Wright, ‘Geographies of Belonging’ (2009) 41(4) Environment and Planning 772, 772. 135 ibid. 30