38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 293 control (including stateless people), 351 citizens can make stronger claims on their States and hold their States accountable for duties, but not the stateless. Citizens are those who can demand and receive rights protection from the State; the stateless cannot do so meaningfully. This means that a substantive comparison between people or groups of people in terms of human rights protection is inevitable in an analysis. To note, the greatest deficit of the current definition—aside from discretionism—is its formalistic nature, not incorporating the rationale that the 1954 Statelessness Convention is a protective instrument. It only allows one to look at whether an individual belongs to the polity of a State or not through State gaze. The statelessness definition is currently structured to serve a gatekeeping function, making available a limited number of rights enumerated in the 1954 Statelessness Convention. 352 While this is not an obscure point, it had been obfuscated because the current definition centers statelessness claims on the presence or absence of mere formal political membership. Thereby, the materiality of the human condition is almost always ignored as, to a much larger extent, is also the treaty's rights protective role. To address this, the first prong of my proposed framework suggests that the definition of statelessness should be functional, that is, it should highlight what statelessness does to people. While we could be at a loss as to what statelessness means, we are clear with what statelessness does: it deprives people of the right to nationality. States should look for the material condition as to the right to nationality—not the other way around—to deduce statelessness. States could develop a definition from the viewpoint of the right to nationality. When the right to nationality is enjoyed, then the person is not stateless. When the right to nationality is not enjoyed, then the person is stateless. Pragmatically, during stateless status determinations, I propose that the starting point should still be the law and the perceived or reported status of the person. However, the perceived or reported status of the person should be pierced in appropriate cases to inquire into substantial nationality protection. a. Focusing on the Right to Nationality States should look at concrete manifestations of the right to nationality to determine whether its inverse—statelessness—exists or not. States could comparatively define and determine statelessness from the viewpoint of the right to nationality. The focus on the right to nationality has the advantage of addressing the abstract and ideographic elements of the statelessness definition as it is presently conceived in the 1954 Statelessness Convention. 353 Previously, I unpacked how the definition reifies the stateless person due to its abstract elements. Here, the 351. 352. 353. Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 31, p. 4. See 1954 Statelessness Convention, supra note 16, at arts. 3–32. See id., at art. 1(1).