DPCE online, 2020/4 – Saggi ISSN: 2037-6677 Governing through uncertainty? Migration Law and governance in a comparative perspective 16.9 target to enable the ‘right to have rights’ defined by Hanna Arendt nearly seven decades ago. 2. Understanding statelessness in the context of forced migration. The complexity of statelessness requires an interdisciplinary approach. Although international law provides a definition of a ‘stateless person', there is no exhaustive formal definition of statelessness per se, as there is arguably no universal understanding of this phenomenon. Academic discussions highlight two major terms – de jure (by law) statelessness and de facto (by fact) statelessness. A de jure stateless person, as defined in the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (hereinafter: 1954 Convention) stipulates that ‘the term “stateless person” means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’. De facto statelessness is a wider concept, with an ambiguous definition because of the absence of a clear legal framework unifying its usage5. It may be described as an ‘ineffective citizenship’ – in cases when a person possesses a nationality6 of a state, but is not able to access protection of this state and resides outside of its borders. The context of forced migration sets the stage for both notions; however the paper focuses on de jure statelessness to avoid disproportionate conceptualization. Paradoxically, just as in the case of nationality, statelessness can be both inherited and acquired. And as the opposite side of citizenship, statelessness is broadly perceived as a consequence, source or a catalyst of human rights violations. Stateless persons are not only deprived of freedom of movement, they usually cannot access healthcare or education, inherit or buy property, find official employment or register a marriage. The main causes of statelessness include issues with nationality laws (gaps or discriminatory provisions7), geopolitical changes (shifting borders, state successions), migration-related outcomes (conflicting principles of citizenship acquisition8, issues arising from problems with birth registration) and deprivation of citizenship (denationalisation). 5 J. Tucker, Questioning de facto Statelessness by Looking at de facto Citizenship, in 19 Tilburg Law Review 1-2, 277 (2014). 6 Terminological differences between ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ are widely discussed (cf. B. Manby, Citizenship in Africa The Law of Belonging, Oxford, 2018; O. Vonk, Dual nationality in the European Union : a study on changing norms in public and private international law and in the municipal laws of four EU member states, Leiden, 2012). While acknowledging the complexity of this deliberation, the subject matter discussed in the present paper does not allow for a detailed examination, thus, both notions would be used interchangeably. 7 For example, gender-based discriminatory provisions in 25 counties that do not allow women to transfer nationality to their children, see: UNHCR, Background note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness 2019, 2, available at www.refworld.org/pdfid/5c8120847.pdf accessed on 7-7-2020. 8 Jus soli (‘right of the soil’) and jus sanguinis (‘right of blood’) are the principles of citizenship acquisition in different jurisdictions. In cases when a child born in the country with jus sanguinis principle from parents who are citizens (or non-citizens) of jus soli jurisdictions, a risk of statelessness arises, as the citizenship is not granted automatically. 5260