218 Mapping a Sociology of Statelessness discrimination.3 Lindsey Kingston argues that, ‘[UNHCR’s “I Belong” campaign] tends to “flatten” the problem of statelessness and posit the acquisition of legal nationality as its sole aim’.4 Continuing, ‘[s]cholarship on statelessness is complicated, in part, by a limited vocabulary that makes it difficult to adequately discuss notions of membership and status’.5 It is within this context that the value of a sociological understanding of statelessness, resting on concepts whose terms hold a different meaning than in legal literature, ought to be understood. Drawing on major works from within citizenship and nationalism studies, along with more recent sociological literature on statelessness that deviates from the dominant discourse on the issue, the paper seeks to address statelessness as an issue that is best understood through an interdisciplinary approach. 2 Conceptualizing Citizenship Integral to the sociological understanding of statelessness is the distinction between citizenship and nationality—terms which, Katherine Tonkiss argues, have been conflated in legal literature on the issue.6 Paired with Balaton-Chrimes’ suggestion that the concept of citizenship espoused in the dominant discourse around statelessness is a “thin” notion of citizenship operationalized primarily through legal citizenship,7 the conflation of citizenship and nationality result in both concepts being operationalized through formal legal status. By contrast, citizenship and nationality are considered to be two different (albeit deeply interrelated) fields of study within sociology—neither of which can be contained within the legal definition of citizenship. The sociologists Schinkel and van Houdt define citizenship as ‘a state regulated mechanism of inclusion and exclusion’ and differentiate between “formal citizenship”, or formal legal status, and “moral citizenship”, or a normative concept of how a “good citizen” should be.8 Conceptualizing citizenship slightly differently, Isin and Turner outline three fundamental axes along which citizenship can be situated: extent (who is included/excluded), content (its associated rights and responsibilities), and depth (in terms of “thinness” or “thickness”).9 Each of these definitions open up for different interpretations of what it means to be a citizen and problematizes any clear-cut citizen/non-citizen binary. In turn, a broader understanding of citizenship allows for a more complex conceptualization of statelessness in which the issue cannot simply be reduced to the lack of formal legal status and where the issue cannot be fully addressed by acquisition of legal citizenship. This will be explored in more depth in the following sections. The fundamental role of our underlying conceptualizations of citizenship in shaping how we understand statelessness is perhaps most clearly exemplified in the concept of de facto statelessness. Crucially, the very concept of de facto statelessness, or the idea that a person can possess citizenship that is ineffective,10 acknowledges that citizenship is a concept that is not fully encompassed by formal legal status.11 The concept implies that the rights associated with citizenship are not universally applied among citizens and raises the challenge of determining when citizenship is effective and when it is not. Lindsey Kingston approaches this issue through introducing the concept of “functioning citizenship”, or citizenship where there is ‘an active 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 See Latif Tas, ‘How International Law Impacts on Statelessness and Citizenship: the Case of Kurdish Nationalism, Conflict and Peace’ (2016) 12 International Journal of Law in Context 42; Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole, ‘Introduction: Providing a Framework for Understanding Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) Understanding Statelessness (Routledge: 2017); Lindsey Kingston, ‘Worthy of Rights: Statelessness as a Cause and Symptom of Marginalisation’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) Understanding Statelessness (Routledge: 2017). Kingston (n 2) 28. Kingston (n 2) 29. Although legal scholarship of citizenship does not focus only on citizenship acquisition as an end in itself, but also on citizenship as a ‘gateway right’ to accessing other rights (Matthew Gibney, ‘Statelessness and the Right to Citizenship’ (2009) 32 FMR 50), Kingston argues that these discussions are nonetheless framed and limited by a vocabulary that does not allow for a comprehensive engagement with underlying social structures. Katherine Tonkiss, ‘Statelessness and the Performance of Citizenship-as-Nationality’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) Understanding Statelessness (Routledge: 2017). Notably, UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness (2014) uses the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ interchangeably. Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, ‘Statelessness, Identity Cards and Citizenship as Status in the Case of Nubians in Kenya’ (2014) 18 Citizenship Studies 17. Willem Schinkel and Friso van Houdt, ‘The Double Helix of Cultural Assimilationism and Neo-Liberalism: Citizenship in Contemporary Governmentality’ (2010) 61 The British Journal of Sociology 696; See also Willem Schinkel, ‘The Virtualization of Citizenship’ (2010) 36 Critical Sociology 265. Engin Isin and Bryan Turner, Handbook of Citizenship Studies (Sage 2002). Hugh Massey, ‘UNHCR and de facto statelessness’ (2010). See Gibney (n 4) 50 for further legal examples of citizenship as a concept broader than formal legal status, such as in the case of amnesty programs.