STATELESSNESS AS A PRODUCT OF SLIPPERY STATECRAFT: A GLOBAL GOVERNANCE VIEW OF CURRENT CAUSES, ACTORS AND DEBATES ALLISON J PETROZZIELLO * Statelessness has been described as the result of unintentional gaps between citizenship policies excluding individuals who move, form relationships and reproduce across international borders. But what if the rise in statelessness is not a technicality, but a strategy of slippery statecraft meant to design the citizenry a given state is willing to protect? This paper places statelessness within the context of neoliberal globalisation and international migration and provides a critical global governance view of contemporary causes of statelessness, key actors working on it and their framing of the issue within global governance frameworks. I argue that the dominant framing of statelessness as a technical issue obviates the politics behind statelessness as slippery statecraft, leading proposed solutions to fall short. Critical research may help advocates make the case for inclusion, appealing to broader state interests and networks, without abandoning attendant human rights obligations. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction........................................................................................................... 136 A Brief History of Statelessness in Global Governance ....................................... 138 Contemporary Causes of Statelessness ................................................................. 140 Global Governance Actors Concerned with Statelessness ................................... 145 UNHCR’s Technical Approach to Ending Statelessness ...................................... 145 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion’s Human Rights-Based Approach ......... 148 Depoliticising Statelessness to Integrate It in Global Governance Frameworks .. 149 Concluding Remarks: Seeing the state in Statelessness and New Ways of Seeing ..................................................................................................... 152 INTRODUCTION With unprecedented numbers of people on the move, stateless populations are cropping up in new places and for reasons other than displacement by conflict or state succession. International labour migration and attempts to manage it are creating what Rhoda Howard-Hassmann and Margaret Walton-Roberts have called a ‘slippery slope of citizenship’ 1 along which migrants and their children may find themselves manufactured as the ‘citizen’s Other’ 2 — not only noncitizens, but stateless. * 1 2 Allison J Petrozziello is a feminist migration researcher and human rights advocate, currently pursuing a PhD in Global Governance at Wilfrid Laurier University/Balsillie School of International Affairs in Canada, where she is affiliated with the International Migration Research Centre. Rhoda E Howard-Hassmann and Margaret Walton-Roberts, The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery Concept (University of Pennsylvania Press 2015) 5. Audrey Macklin, ‘Who is the Citizen’s Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship’ (2007) 8(2) Theoretical Inquiries in Law 333.