‘People without a State Also Must Live’
address individuals’ structural dependency on the state in relation to the role of
citizenship within individuals’ visions for inclusion.
STATELESSNESS AND THE INTERNATIONAL STATE SYSTEM
Overwhelmingly, statelessness is a concept understood in terms of its legal
definition as per the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (‘1954
Convention’). 8 Consequently, and in line with this legalistic understanding,
citizenship acquisition and changes to states’ citizenship laws are heralded as the
solutions to statelessness. 9 This dominant legalistic conceptualisation of
statelessness has been criticised for having a restrictive legal focus and for
overlooking broader systemic processes underlying statelessness. 10 Within this
context, statelessness will be explored as a broader sociological concept to be
understood in relation to the international state system, in order to interrogate the
role of citizenship in relation to the realisation of inclusion.
The scope of the issue of statelessness, and the profundity of its impact, can
only be appropriately understood within the context of the hegemonic
international state system. Primarily, Hannah Arendt significantly identifies
statelessness as an iconic fallacy of the modern state system, 11 and this analysis is
echoed by a range of contemporary scholars who consider the global system of
sovereign states to be the root cause of statelessness. 12 Parallel to the state system
according states the sovereign right to determine who is a citizen and who is not,
the state has also acquired the responsibility of protecting the rights of the citizen
and, by extension, the capability to deny the rights of individuals who the state
determines to be non-citizens. 13 In what Arendt refers to as the ‘tragedy of the
nation-state’, human rights are thereby increasingly granted on the basis of state
recognition as a citizen, rather than on the basis of being human. 14 Relatedly,
conflicting international norms regarding human rights, peace preservation and the
norm of state sovereignty embedded within the modern state system risk
undermining the human rights norm at the expense of upholding the sovereignty
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September
1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960) art 1.
Ending Statelessness within 10 Years (n 7) 21–2. See generally The World’s Stateless (n 7);
Still Stateless, Still Suffering (n 7).
Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole, ‘Providing a Framework for
Understanding Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds),
Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 1, 7–8; Patrick Hayden, ‘From Exclusion to
Containment: Arendt, Sovereign Power, and Statelessness (2008) 3(2) Societies Without
Borders 249; Lindsey N Kingston, ‘Worthy of Rights: Statelessness as a Cause and Symptom
of Marginalisation’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillips Cole (eds),
Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 15; Latif Tas, ‘How International Law
Impacts on Statelessness and Citizenship: The Case of Kurdish Nationalism, Conflict and
Peace’ (2016) 12(1) International Journal of Law in Context 42.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Schocken Books 2004) 368.
See, eg, Tendayi Bloom, ‘Members of Colonised Groups, Statelessness and the Right to Have
Rights’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding
Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 153; Bloom, Tonkiss and Cole (n 10); Eliassi, ‘Statelessness
in a World of Nation-States’ (n 5); Nell Gabiam, ‘Citizenship and Development: Palestinians
in France and the Multiple Meanings of Statelessness’ (2015) 50(4) Studies in Comparative
International Development 479.
Hayden (n 10) 253.
ibid 252; Arendt (n 11) 296.
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