AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 and psychosocial status to stateless persons is enduring. Given the high likelihood of post-statelessness mental health challenges, it is crucial to gain insight into how best to provide psychosocial care. The evidence on such interventions is limited to non-existent. As a point of departure for the discussion points in this section, we use a case example based on the experience of one of the authors during social work intervention with a stateless adolescent in South Africa. The aim of using the one case example is to show the interconnectedness of the trauma (i.e., big ‘T’ versus small ‘t’) and the intersectional lens to statelessness. This is because statelessness intersects with many factors leading to it largely remaining unrepresented in national, regional, or global discourses. Case example In 2007, I was working as a social worker at an institution in South Africa that accommodated orphaned and vulnerable children. During this time, I was assigned the case of Andrew (not his real name). Andrew was a seventeen-year-old teenage boy who was born in and had migrated from Tanzania as a toddler. His stepfather who took care and custody of him was an Umkhonto we Sizwe war veteran who was in exile at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Andrew was born in Tanzania, and he did not have any legal documentation when his stepfather relocated to South Africa, at the dawn of democracy, with him and his Tanzanian biological mother. The efforts by Andrew’s stepfather to obtain South African citizenship for him, were without success. Years passed until Andrew’s mother passed away and his stepfather remarried. The new wife of Andrew’s stepfather did not want to stay with Andrew, claiming that he was not a biological son to her new husband. Andrew ended up in institutional care due to neglect and constant problems at home caused by the displeasure from his stepfather’s wife. Andrew was a highly intelligent boy and he also excelled as a soccer player. He had dreams to play for Bafana Bafana — the South African national team. He calls South Africa home, and it is the only country he identified with. He had no memory of Tanzania and he had never gone back to visit since moving to South Africa. He only spoke English and several South African languages. In 2007, Andrew was supposed to write his matric exams. Unfortunately, he did not have a South African or Tanzanian birth certificate or any identity document. The Tanzanian embassy could not help his case due to the bureaucratic process involved in family tracing and proving his birthplace. As such, the Tanzanian embassy could not prove if Andrew was indeed born in Tanzania and that his mother was a Tanzanian citizen. As the same time, he was denied South African documentation, rendering him stateless. Andrew was told that he could not register as a candidate for the final high school exams. He approached the social worker with this concern, and was reassured that every effort possible would be made to help with his case and that the issue will be resolved in time to allow him to register for the exams. Despite the reassurances and the possible solutions suggested to him, Andrew was growing despondent by the day. Not 50