Sköld 223 state system. The alternative conceptualizations offered are then used to address the notion of citizenship as a blanket solution to statelessness. The problematization of the idea of citizenship is at the heart of complicating the idea of citizenship as a blanket solution, as it questions several of the assumptions that are inherent in a legal understanding of citizenship, such as its universality. Citizenship as a blanket solution is then addressed in the context of struggles for self-determination, in which the state cannot be conceived of as an emancipatory actor. Following this idea, the political dimension of citizenship and statelessness is addressed and the idea of both citizenship and statelessness as political tools is introduced. Using the example of Kurdistan, it is argued that citizenship can be used as a tool of oppression. In line with Isin and Wood’s suggestion that citizenship should not be understood as an exclusively legal or sociological concept, but as a combination of the two, I posit that statelessness is best approached through a joint understanding of its legal definitions and its sociological conceptualizations. The aim of this paper is by no means to downplay the importance of accessing citizenship, challenging discriminatory citizenship laws or ensuring individuals’ access to justice, but to offer a nuanced framework through which dominant assumptions concerning statelessness can be reconsidered. The dominant legal understanding of statelessness offers a narrow framework of conceptualization but, whereas law is sovereignty-affirming, sociology allows for a space to question the hegemonic rules by which society is structured. Competing Interests The author has no competing interests to declare. How to cite this article: Nannie Sköld, ‘Mapping a Sociology of Statelessness’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review pp. 217–223. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.155 Published: 02 July 2019 Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. Tilburg Law Review is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by Ubiquity Press. OPEN ACCESS