Identifying the Stateless in the United Kingdom • 445 2. M ET H O D O LO G Y 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 The primary research was carried out in 2016 in preparation for the report Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention in the United Kingdom (n 8). Explanatory Memorandum to the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules presented to Parliament on 7 March 2019 (House of Commons (HC) 1919). Some of the lawyers and advocates interviewed gave permission for their names to be used in the article, whereas some others preferred to be referred to anonymously. The interviewees who were in limbo claimed to be stateless and, using the triangulation method, they indeed seemed to have a claim for statelessness. On the triangulation method, see Julia Brannen, Mixing Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Research (Routledge 1995). The interviewee who was granted refugee status was a stateless Bidoon. When a stateless person is also a refugee, the preference is to grant him or her refugee status as it ensures access to more rights than stateless status. Specifically, one had an application pending with the HO, and one had a judicial review claim against the refusal of his statelessness application. Ilse van Liempt and Veronika Bilger, ‘Methodological and Ethical Dilemmas in Research among Smuggled Migrants’ in Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Evren Yalaz (eds), Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies (IMISCOE 2018) 273, 276. In the immigration detention centres, I used interview rooms to secure sufficient privacy. Federica d’Alessandra and others (eds), Handbook on Civil Society Documentation of Serious Human Rights Violations (Public International Law & Policy Group 2016) 97. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijrl/article/32/3/440/6065591 by guest on 04 July 2025 The article adopts a qualitative approach using analysis of law, policy, case law, secondary sources (academic literature and reports), and interviews. All data were collected between February 2016 and October 2019.24 Even though the semi-structured interviews date back to 2016, the data remain relevant due to the absence of major changes in national law and policy.25 The 20 interviews included nine interviews with lawyers and advocates expert on statelessness and immigration detention26 and 11 with stateless persons from Kuwait, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Djibuti, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Palestine, Ivory Coast, and Western Sahara. The stateless persons interviewed were individuals recognized as stateless or having a claim pending.27 Their legal status at the time of interview varied. Only two had been granted a legal status based on statelessness; one had refugee status;28 and the others were staying irregularly in the UK. Specifically, two had pending statelessness cases29 and one had an application based on his right to family life. Two were receiving legal advice on applying for stateless status. Three had had their statelessness application refused. Nine had experienced immigration detention (two remained in detention at the time of interview). Detention periods varied from three months to three and a half years; some of the interviewees had been detained several times. The two interviewees who had not been detained were included in the dataset because their experiences provide insights into access to justice within the SDP. Table 1 below provides a list of the stateless persons interviewed in the study. The interviewees, who were living in different parts of England, were identified through lawyers and NGOs. The snowball method was employed to find other research participants.30 Interviews lasted about two hours. Two of them took place in immigration detention centres,31 while the others were held in public places, such as