Better Must Come employment and political participation. In so doing, it establishes that the acquisition of citizenship does not necessarily provide the previously stateless with the benefits that formal recognition from the state is assumed to provide. With an eye to Sri Lanka specifically, this paper challenges the reigning narrative of ending statelessness in Sri Lanka as a tale of success. Of equal importance, on 4 November 2014, the UNHCR launched the ten-year global campaign to end statelessness, an issue that, according to the UNHCR, ‘can be resolved in a single moment’. 5 This paper tempers this claim and contributes a measure of nuance to the broader discussion of bringing about this phenomenon’s global resolution by establishing that there continues to exist a human rights deficit that ought to have been resolved through the acquisition of citizenship. As well, because the literature on how previously stateless groups view the acquisition of citizenship has yet to be fully developed, this paper contributes to a growing body of work that can be used to inform the broader global strategy devised to resolve statelessness. Finally, it is important to evaluate if or how citizenship has improved the lives of the previously stateless insofar as the #IBELONG Campaign risks delivering some 10 million 6 previously stateless persons further into the shadows upon the receipt of citizenship when the act of conferment is celebrated and memorialised at the expense of true substantive change. This paper is structured as follows: the remainder of Part One outlines the conceptual framework, the UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign, and the methods used. With respect to the conceptual framework, the theory of liberal citizenship as advanced by Thomas Humphrey Marshall, whereby the struggle to attain individual rights is recognised as a core component of citizenship, is extended by the work of Ruth Lister and Evalina Dagnino to reimagine citizenship as struggle. To better establish theorizing citizenship as struggle, and thus restore agency to previously stateless persons who struggle to not only gain new rights, but give substance to those rights that have already been secured, the concept of dissensus as developed by French philosopher Jacques Rancière is explored and adopted to buttress the theory of citizenship used in this paper. Part II provides an overview of the historical experience of Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population from the nineteenth century forward. Part III provides an explanation of why access to healthcare, education, employment and political participation among Sri Lanka’s Up-Country Tamil population comprise the focus of this study, and presents with analysis the aggregate findings of the questionnaire surveys and interviews conducted to determine whether the acquisition of citizenship has provided for increased access and entitlement to healthcare, education, employment and political participation. Part IV provides a discussion of the major themes that arise out of said findings and analysis. Part V examines the major themes identified, draws a tentative conclusion from this research and what it can tell us about other previously stateless groups and ending statelessness generally, and makes a call for comparative research that can better grasp the situation of previously stateless persons beyond one context. A Conceptual Framework The object of analysis animating this study is the previously stateless person, that is, the stateless person who has acquired citizenship in a given state and is 5 6 ibid 20. ibid. 7