2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) On the third day morning, Ralph Ya made another announcement: ‘Dear Participants, we still need 30 passports to free Neha, please cooperate���. Ralph asked me to go to participants and motivate them to go through the process, which I did. I remember two of the participants telling me that they tried to get the passport but the process was too long and they got distracted. I told them that was because the experiment wants to show people how devastating and dehumanising the process was, they listened to me and hugged me. One of them said, ‘you are right, sorry, I did not think that way, I am going to get it now’. 89 By 5:00 PM Ralph declared that they had received 46 passports and it was time to free Neha. There were a lot of people in front of the bubble, taking pictures and talking. Ralph Ya placed himself in front of the bubble, looking very happy. He thanked all of the participants who went through the whole process. After that, he lifted the bubble from the symbolic Neha. Everyone clapped and cheered. The person standing near me was telling another participant, this is nice, but it is also over-ambitious. If the state does not want to give them the passport no way you can lift the bubble around them, which is the case now and I am not sure if it will change. 90 Another person replied, it’s a shame that they are living in a bubble their whole life, I see her as a living embodiment of every stateless child and imagining my children in such a bubble is very frightening. 91 I looked at the persons face and I saw sadness. In my opinion, this feeling of empathy that arose from the participants was the main objective of this art experiment. Empathy has been generally described in literature as a ‘capacity’ to feel and realise others’ state of mind and emotions. More generally it has been characterised as ‘putting oneself into others’ shoes’. 92 Empathy has been widely recognised and used by feminist scholars to build affective solidarity, to facilitate political transformation, to challenge the objectivity of knowledge and to promote a different way of knowing things. For instance, Claire Hemmings states, to know differently we have to feel differently. Feeling that something is amiss in how one is recognised, feeling an ill fit with social descriptions, feeling undervalued, feeling that same sense in considering others… . 93 One of the major advocates of the feminist intersectionality approach, Patricia Hill Collins states, 89 90 91 92 93 Conversation with an anonymous participant (Mizanur Rahman, World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, 28 June 2019). Observation note, reaction of an anonymous participant ((Mizanur Rahman, World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, 28 June 2019). ibid See, eg, Cynthia V Ward, ‘A Kinder, Gentler Liberalism? Visions of Empathy in Feminist and Communitarian Literature’ (1994) 61(3) University of Chicago Law Review 929; F Ioannidou and Vaya Konstantikaki, ‘Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: What is it Really About?’ (2008) 1(3) International Journal of Caring Sciences 118; Alison Bailey, ‘On Intersectionality, Empathy, and Feminist Solidarity: A Reply to Naomi Zack’ (2009) 18(2) The Journal of Peace and Justice Studies 14; Claire Hemmings, ‘Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation’ (2012) 13 Feminist Theory 147. Claire Hemmings (n 68) 150. 290