Collective Victimisation Of Stateless Peoples 287 arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Although at odds with human rights standards,6 most states hold clauses in their domestic legal systems that allow for revocation of a person’s citizenship. This grants the state legal space to exclude those who it deems ‘unworthy’ and ‘undesirable’ from their protection.7 When a state decides to revoke nationality for discriminatory purposes, the person left stateless faces a complicated life in the hostile state environment. Not only is his access to a number of fundamental rights entangled, he also has to cope with the reality of a society that is framing him as an undesirable ‘Other’ rather than a person prone to become victimised by the implications of statelessness. The social construction of the statelessness label in these circumstances thus renders a person subjected to it more vulnerable than in cases where de jure statelessness is a consequence of an ‘accidental’ loophole in the law, or voluntary revocation. Moreover, state discourse framing the stateless as ‘outlaws’ might facilitate bottom-up legitimacy for policy that further discriminates against the excluded. In extreme cases this might lead to outright state-violence, as happened during the persecution of Jews in the first half of the 20th century and today in states such as Lebanon and Myanmar. In the present contribution we explore how returning the ‘victim label’ to stateless people living in the context of abusive states may nurture recognition of the stateless as victims. People who have fallen victims of the discriminatory policies of their states may be constructed within the state as ‘undesirable’ or ‘politically controversial’ rather than ‘deserving victims’ worthy of compassion and a solution for their fate. This negative discourse is partially facilitated by legal documents that fail to recognise the proneness to experience victimisation of those who hold no citizenship. We argue that returning ‘the victim label’ to stateless communities, through academic debate and advocacy might positively transform the way in which stateless people are framed, and as such strengthen their position at the domestic as well as the international level. 2 The Victim Label in Victimology In the introduction we stressed that the reality of statelessness depends on the social construction of this term within a specific society. In this section we 6 The right to nationality is enshrined in article 15 of the UDHR. A vast number of Conventions has thereby stipulated the right to nationality. For a comprehensive overview, please consult: A/HRC/13/34. 7 H. Arendt ‘Chapter 9: The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Men’ in The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1973) 267-302. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 285-293