Brennan 173 state? In what way and when does this relationship shift, or become queered upon acquisition (or loss) of citizenship? To what extent does the acquisition of citizenship normalize one’s sense of belonging? d) Sara Ahmed and Judith Butler’s works are also ground-breaking in Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) research, which could add great value to the sector should the lived experiences of LGBTQ stateless persons ever be documented. e) In working through the domestic law/international law binary of responsibility to end statelessness, feminist critiques of the public/private dichotomy (also known as “the personal is political” nexus) by scholars such as Anannya Bhattacharjee16 and Aoife O’Donoghue17 are essential. As will be highlighted later in this paper, Tang Lay Lee offered the first application of this debate in a statelessness setting. Consider the gendered nature of domestic law and how international human rights frameworks lack the enforcement to override such discriminatory laws because of their “private” nature. Can feminist theories on the public/private dichotomy be read into legal challenges of “state sovereignty”, a defense mechanism often used against resolving in situ stateless populations? f) Feminist research practices, such as standpoint epistemology, advocated by Patricia Hill Collins,18 and Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy’s “how-to” guide on such practices,19 can add value to the recording and portrayal of the lived experiences of stateless persons. A standpoint epistemology can be used to see and understand the world through the eyes and experiences of stateless people. This will ultimately aid other statelessness actors across disciplines and professions, in applying the knowledge of stateless people to how we raise awareness around the issue. g) The policing of women’s bodies (specifically their reproductive capacity) through state policy is well-documented by feminist writers in critical human trafficking research,20 in the fight for reproductive justice,21 and in the context of marriage migration.22 Allison J. Petrozziello (as will be outlined later) applied this line of enquiry to statelessness in the context of the Dominican Republic. Extending Petrozziello’s work to other contexts, to uncover the connectedness between statelessness, state oppression and women’s bodies, would be a valuable investigation. h) In unwrapping the implications of postcolonialism in creating and maintaining stateless populations, a host of works by the influential postcolonial and feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,23 also Butler and Spivak,24 are critical points of departure. As an illustration, one may ask what scope there is to hold former colonizers accountable for their role in present day stateless populations? Furthermore, postcolonial feminist concepts of “othering”, the systematic degradation of a group seen as inferior, and the consequences of “divide and rule” colonial policies, should be read as closely linked to the discrimination that leads to statelessness in several contexts today. There is not a hierarchy amongst the research questions outlined here. Rather, they aim to promote and serve as a springboard for feminist-statelessness research. These varying research ideas also show that statelessness is not immune to feminist analysis but that such an analysis can provide both an application of theory and of research practices to the field. Feminist research practices decentralize power, raise consciousness, and use experiences as a resource. Feminist theory can disrupt accepted patterns of thinking to broaden 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 A Bhattacharjee, A. ‘The public/private mirage’ in J Alexander & C Mohanty (eds), Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies and ­democratic futures, (Routledge 1997) 308. A O’Donoghue, ‘The Admixture of Feminine Weakness and Susceptibility: Gendered Personifications of the State in International Law’ (2018) 19 Melbourne Journal of International Law 227. P H Collins, ‘Black feminist thought in the matrix of domination’ in Charles, L. (ed), Social theory: The multicultural and classic readings (Westview Press 1993) 626. S N Hesse-Biber, & P L Leavy, Feminist research practice (SAGE Publications 2007). J O’Connell Davidson, ‘Let’s go outside: bodies, prostitutes, slaves and worker citizens’ (2014) 18(5) Citizenship Studies 516. A Quilty, C Conlon, & S Kennedy, The Abortion Papers Ireland: Volume 2. Cork: Cork University Press. S Kneebone, ‘Transnational marriage migration and nationality: the cases of South Korea and Taiwan’ (Immigration, Migration, Transnational Networks and Activities in the Asia Pacific Region conference, Seoul National University, 24 November 2017). See, G C Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ in C Nelson, and L Grossberg (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (University of Illinois Press 1988) 271. Also, G C Spivak, A critique of postcolonial reason (Harvard university press 1999). J Butler, and G Spivak, ‘Who sings the nation-state’ (2007) Language, politics, belonging 58.