Addressing statelessness in Europe’s refugee response CIVIL SOCIETY ACTORS In addition to the focus group discussions with community representatives and individuals working in specific cultural mediation roles, eight individual interviews were carried out with civil society representatives of national and international NGOs, lawyers, and grassroots voluntary organisations (three in Greece, two in the Netherlands, and three in Serbia). Whereas the focus group discussions aimed to elicit collective issues from representatives of communities affected by statelessness, individual interviews with civil society actors sought to better understand the level of knowledge, capacity and attitudes towards statelessness among this key group of stakeholders, as well as their understanding of the challenges facing stateless refugees in each of the research sites. Knowledge of statelessness and nationality issues Civil society actors noted a general lack of understanding of statelessness and nationality issues among their staff and stakeholders. Across the different research countries, most agreed that more information was needed about statelessness and the protection of stateless refugees in the contexts they were working to enable them to assist affected individuals. There was often a fundamental misunderstanding of what statelessness is, as well as a lack of understanding of the key causes, such as conflicts in nationality laws. Many had never considered how nationality laws in countries of origin might impact on the status of refugees or their children and one interviewee admitted they did not know that gender discrimination prevented many refugee women from conferring their nationality to their children. Among focus group participants, those who represented communities directly affected and those who worked with people from countries with more well-known stateless populations – such as Syrians – were more aware of statelessness than those working with Afghans, for example. Participants in the Netherlands could articulate clearly the challenges their own communities faced but were less aware of challenges faced by other stateless communities in the country. Among Serbian participants, the conflation of being from a country and being a national of that country was common. Statements such as ‘they need to visit their embassy to get documents’ or ‘getting nationality should not be a problem’ showed this knowledge gap, as did the more general conflation of statelessness with being undocumented and a perception that it is ‘more of an issue in Europe’ because of greater bureaucracy or a greater need ‘to be registered’. Among staff of larger refugee support organisations, there was a basic understanding that statelessness could be a major problem, but little programmatic work addressing the issue, and often a belief they had not encountered stateless people, or it was not relevant to their work. Some said they had never met a stateless person, and one said they did not think statelessness existed in Africa. Greek civil society was generally aware of the different stateless profiles encountered there (specifically bidoon and Palestinians), but had less of an understanding of who else might be affected. Individual lawyers in both Greece and the Netherlands had a much deeper understanding of the issue and were able to articulate clearly the challenges facing stateless refugees in their context. However, even these specialists who deal with statelessness regularly, admitted that their knowledge of the impact of conflicts in nationality laws was limited. Insights into the impact of statelessness In Serbia, most civil society actors interviewed had limited insight into the impact of statelessness as they said they had not encountered stateless refugees. However, based on their knowledge of the 10