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STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC
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Secondly, statelessness has become a category, with the consequences associated with categorizing people. The term "stateless" is a category of people in
State vocabulary. Categorization is important for knowledge formation and action. 299 At the intersection of anthropology and migration studies, "the national
order of things" refers to the view that nation-States are the "natural" organizing
parts of the world. 300 Categories structure things and people. 301 As language ordains people and things to belong to a category, 302 categories make it possible to
create groups of phenomena for a branch of knowledge. 303 Yet, analytical categories such as "stateless" are also policy-related labels designed to meet policy
ends. 304 Through categories, States attempt to regulate and control people. Categories are contingent constructs corresponding to State policies. 305
More than an issue of semantics, categories have consequences—firstly entitling "some to protection, rights and resources whilst simultaneously disentitling
others." 306 For instance, we have seen in this Article how identification procedures impact the rights to which a person is entitled, whether as "stateless" or
"citizen" of a State. 307 A stateless person is entitled to a minimum set of rights
under the 1954 Statelessness Convention. A citizen is theoretically entitled to the
entire gamut of rights under their State's constitution and laws.
But, secondly, categories create epistemological blind spots: the plight of
those people excluded from the category is made invisible to the State. 308 The
formalism of the definition and the ideology of discretionism offer an opportunity
for States to look away when claims of human rights violations are presented during determinations. While these States appeal to reason or intellect in reaching a
decision on statelessness, the human rights condition of the applicant, which is
often argued before statelessness determinations, does not appear that relevant to
status determinations. 309 When the applicant's human rights condition is raised,
299. For a discussion of categories and categorization in the social sciences, see Richard Jenkins,
Categorization: Identity, Social Process and Epistemology, 48 CURRENT SOCIO. 7 (2000).
300. See Liisa H. Malkki, Refugees and Exile: From "Refugee Studies" to the National Order of
Things, 24 ANNU. REV. ANTHROPOL. 495, 516 (1995).
301. MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE ORDER OF THINGS: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES
417 (1970).
302. Id. at xvi–xvii.
303. Id. at 389.
304. Claire Beaugrand, Framing Nationality in the Migratory Context: The Elusive Category of
Biduns in Kuwait, 6 MIDDLE E. L. & GOVERNANCE 173, 176 (2014).
305. Id. at 176–77.
306. Heaven Crawley & Dimitris Skleparis, Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe's 'Migration Crisis', 44(1) J. ETHNIC & MIGRATION
STUD. 48, 59 (2018).
307. See supra notes 124-26 and accompanying text.
308. See Tara Polzer, Invisible Integration: How Bureaucratic, Academic and Social Categories
Obscure Integrated Refugees, 21(4) J. REFUGEE STUD. 476, 477 (2008).
309. See Part II.C.1