2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) and durational residency requirements.101 While countries like Latvia, Estonia, the United Arab Emirates or Myanmar have, for instance, tied nationality to a certain date to which one must be able to trace ancestry,102 Slovenia and the Dominican Republic have legally counted residential time in a way that renders some individuals stateless.103 According to Jain, the second subtle way in which states manufacture statelessness is spatial. For example, Kuwait and Malaysia have delineated their territorial borders so that some groups — the Bidoons in Kuwait and the Bajau Laut in Malaysia — are excluded from nationality.104 Others, like India, Bangladesh and Thailand, have created stateless enclaves in their borderlands.105 The third way involves a number of administrative practices. One of them is archival erasure. After Slovenian independence from the former Yugoslavia, immigrants who forgot to apply for nationality within the given six month period or whose application was rejected were erased from all registries and thereby rendered permanently stateless.106 India’s amendment of the National Register of Citizens (‘NRC’) is arguably the most notorious case where documentation or the lack thereof has been used as a weapon.107 To this day, the NRC has deprived about 1.9 million individuals who reside in the State of Assam of their nationality.108 Denationalisation is an even more explicit tool to render nationals de jure stateless. A good example here, and one that is worth exploring in more detail, is the case of Shamima Begum. The Government of the United Kingdom’s need to give justification for her denationalisation strongly indicates that legal nonrecognition and social non-recognition are closely intertwined in the case of denigrative statelessness. Begum, who grew up in London, joined the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (‘ISIL’) in February 2015. Four years later, she was encountered by a newspaper war correspondent in the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Northern Syria. In an interview with the correspondent, Begum expressed her intention to return home because she was afraid that her third and, at that time, unborn baby may become sick at the camp.109 A day later, the UK Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime (‘UK Security Minister’) responded to Begum’s intentions on a radio show. He made clear that the Government of the United Kingdom would not facilitate Begum’s return, despite her British nationality. He argued that he would not put ‘at risk 101 See ibid 250–52; ‘Soy Dominicano—The Status of Haitian Descendants Born in the 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 Dominican Republic and Measures to Protect Their Right to a Nationality Note’ (2014) 47(4) Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 1123, 1142–43. See Jain (n 100) 251–53. See ibid 255–58. ibid 265. ibid 262–63. ibid 258. ibid 271. Talha Abdul Rahman, ‘Identifying the “Outsider”: An Assessment of Foreigner Tribunals in the Indian State of Assam’ (2020) 2(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 112, 118. Begum’s worries were not unfounded as she had already lost two babies to illness and malnutrition: Aamna Mohdin and Martin Chulov, ‘Shamima Begum Baby Death “A Stain on Conscience of UK Government”’, The Guardian (online, 9 March 2019) <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/sajid-javid-denounced-shamimabegums-baby-dies-syria>, archived at <https://perma.cc/R757-RFF7>. 252