2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) potential risks of coercion or violence by the state when stateless members of the population are registered, 16 barriers to such registration in the first place, 17 and how the allocation of citizenship can create or maintain divisions, 18 or remain a legal fiction eliminating legal statelessness but creating other problems. 19 This Part also demonstrates the diversity of views and experiences amongst stateless persons. For example, Natalie Brinham’s contribution discusses the perspective of some Rohingya activists against being labelled ‘stateless’ because it is seen to reconfirm the state’s denial of their citizenship: ‘We are not stateless! … Why are [international lawyers] calling us stateless?’ 20 Other contributions in this Part explore different organisations’ approaches to promoting the rights of stateless persons. 21 In this review, I focus on three chapters that stood out to me as an international lawyer working in the areas of armed conflict and counterterrorism. Lindsey N Kingston’s chapter ‘The Weaponisation of Citizenship: Punishment, Erasure, and Social Control’ 22 discusses how states can use citizenship as a means of repression, exclusion, punishment or an erasure of other identities. The offer of citizenship can also be used as a reward for good deeds. Observing the shifts in how certain states view citizenship, from a legal right to a privilege that can be taken away, challenges the assumption that legal nationality always offers a form of protection. The point is that this shift regarding legal nationality chips away at citizenship’s security and reliability, at the protection it offers, when it becomes something contingent on one’s good or bad behaviour as determined by state interests. Citizenship becomes more fragile and forfeitable. Of note in Kingston’s chapter is that the problem is not only denationalisation as a form of punishment or control — Kingston uses the examples of laws allowing citizenship-stripping of terrorism suspects, as punishments for the commission of domestic crimes, as well as mass denationalisations and discriminatory citizenship laws which have been relied upon throughout the 20th Century and still today. Rather, she points 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Heather Alexander, ‘The Ethics of Quantifying Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 238. Edwin O Abuya, ‘Registering Persons at Risk of Statelessness in Kenya: Solutions or Further Problems?’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 251. Haqqi Bahram, ‘Too Little Too Late? Naturalisation of Stateless Kurds and Transitional Justice in Syria’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 264. Yoana Kuzmova, ‘Statelessness Elimination through Legal Fiction: The United Arab Emirates’ Comorian Minority’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 276. Natalie Brinham, ‘“We Are Not Stateless! You Can Call Us What You Like, But We Are Citizens of Myanmar!”: Rohingya Resistance and the Stateless Label’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 342. See, for example, Melissa Schnyder, ‘Civil Society Advocacy to Address Statelessness: Using Norms to Promote Progress on the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 306; Ekaterina E, ‘United Stateless in the United States: Reflections from an Activist’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 356. Lindsey N Kingston, ‘The Weaponisation of Citizenship: Punishment, Erasure, and Social Control’ in Tendayi Bloom and Lindsey N Kingston (eds), Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021) 99. 362