220 Mapping a Sociology of Statelessness partly constructed through the suppression of Kurdish identity, and argues that the “cultural [o]thering” of the Kurds partly explains the process of Kurdish identity formation.21 Echoing this idea, Natali argues that ‘[e]thnicity became that basis of Kurdish identity not because it was rooted in some premodern past, but because it was the category of political identities used by central governments to determine inclusion and exclusion in the modern state system.’22 Locating Kurdish nationalism within the outlined citizenship processes of Middle Eastern states, Natali argues that ‘Kurdish communities “Kurdified” what the state elite Arabized, Turkified, and Persianized’.23 Thus, the ethno-nationalist dimension of Kurdish conflict should not be essentialized, but is better understood as a manifestation of the lines along which exclusion has been articulated. 3 Statelessness and the International State System Within sociological literature, and stemming from Hannah Arendt’s thoughts in The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man, statelessness is frequently approached through a critical analysis of the hegemonic international state system.24 It is through critically engaging with this hegemonic framework that the scale of the consequences of exclusion from citizenship, and its embeddedness within exclusion from the nation, can be approached in a comprehensive manner. However, although Arendt thinks of statelessness as an iconic fallacy of the international state system, she also finds the solution to statelessness to be within this same system, through citizenship acquisition. Arendt’s ideas are explicitly challenged by Blitz, who argues that Arendt’s firm belief in state protection is an idealization,25 as well as implicitly challenged by authors who advocate for statelessness to be addressed beyond the state system. Gabiam argues that the root cause of statelessness is ‘a political order built on the false assumption that the entirety of the world population can be neatly divided into sovereign nation-states consisting of citizens’ and points to the emphasis this places on the collective dimensions of statelessness.26 Similarly, Eliassi explains statelessness as ‘a product of the international state system that yields sovereign states the right to include and exclude groups of people who are not viewed as “core” members of the nation’.27 As liberal political thought and the foundations of international law are “sovereignty-affirming”, conceptualizing the problems of and solutions to statelessness within these frameworks consequentially means to rest firmly within the international state system. Considering the “rightlessness” associated with statelessness, Staples argues that the reliance upon the international state system undermines any promise of protection from outwith the state.28 As a consequence of the international state system, nations exist that have not been recognized as sovereign states and which thereby are considered to not have legitimate claims—perhaps most notably Palestine and Kurdistan. Furthermore, indigenous groups are also expected to fall into the citizen/non-citizen binary of the state system.29 It is within this context that statelessness is by some social scientists conceptualized as existing on both the level of individuals or groups lacking citizenship (‘stateless person’ or de jure statelessness) as well as on a level of groups whose nation is not internationally recognized as a sovereign state (‘stateless people’ or ‘social statelessness’).30 In addition to the dimension of de jure statelessness, understood as an individual or group lacking citizenship in terms of formal legal status, this allows for statelessness to be understood as a phenomenon grounded in the idea of the existence of nations that are not recognized as sovereign through the international state system. The intention here is not to detract attention from de jure stateless individuals or groups, but to suggest that there is another dimension of statelessness that has been overlooked. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Barzoo Eliassi, ‘Statelessness in a World of Nation-States’ (2016) 42 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1404–5.; See also Thomas McGee, ‘The Stateless Kurds of Syria’ (2014) 19 Tilburg Law Review 171; Tas (n 2) 45. Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State (Syracuse University Press 2005) xxvi. Natali (n 21) 180. For example, see Eliassi (n 20); Bloom, Tonkiss and Cole (n 2); 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). Brad Blitz, ‘The State and the Stateless: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt Reconsidered’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds) Understanding Statelessness (Routledge: 2017). Nell Gabiam, ‘Citizenship and Development: Palestinians in France and the Multiple Meanings of Statelessness’ (2015) 50 St Com Ind Dev 486. Eliassi (n 20) 1403. Kelly Staples, Retheorising Statelessness: A Background Theory of Membership in World Politics (Edinburgh University Press 2012). See Bloom (n 23) for an in-depth analysis. See Gabiam (n 25); McGee (n 20); Tas (n 2). Bloom (n 23) distinguishes between ‘stateless people’ and ‘stateless peoples’.