‘I Must Be from Somewhere. I’m Not from the Moon’ ‘Ah, so I don’t have citizenship’. I’d always thought that I was dealt with as a Palestinian, even when I was in Lebanon, they deal with you as a Palestinian. In Egypt, they deal with you as a Palestinian from Syria. But in Europe, it’s another thing, you are stateless. 62 This re/de-labelling of their statelessness did not occur for all the participants. This was because the exceptionalism of the Palestinian refugee label is, as discussed earlier, not bound to the space where UNRWA operates. Several interviewees recalled how they were detained or subjected to differential treatment and harassment in Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, Poland and Spain compared to other refugees from Syria due to their Palestinianness. Some participants were detained for prolonged periods of time or found themselves stuck in administrative limbo as asylum bureaucracies were unable to categorise their Palestinianness (or statelessness). In some situations, this ambiguous and fluid stateless/Palestinian label meant that they could not benefit from being labelled as refugees, as they were seen as either Palestinian ‘citizens’ or uncategorisable by those European asylum bureaucracies that do not have stateless determination procedures. Others recalled how Palestinianness was either included in the label of statelessness or was found to be incompatible with statelessness as a bureaucratic category (as it denoted some form of citizenship of Palestine). This is similar to the findings of Kate Darling, who argued that statelessness can be a barrier to claiming protection as a refugee. 63 Resistance to this re/de-labelling took multiple forms. Many of the participants talked about hiding their Palestinianness as they moved through Europe. Some hid documents, photographs or items that they believed could indicate them as Palestinian. Others disposed of documents or left friends and family with instructions to forward them those documents when they had arrived in certain countries where deploying their Palestinianness would be useful. This temporary or permanent obscuring of their Palestinianness was sometimes accompanied by the purchase of documents that would be held by Syrian citizens, the receipt of briefings from smugglers or traffickers on how to avoid being labelled as Palestinian or information on when and where to reveal their Palestinianness to asylum bureaucracies. These actions were taken because the participants believed that the Palestinian or statelessness label could have, or had already, restricted their mobility and/or ability to be labelled as a refugee. This was normally the result of first-hand experience, but in some instances was based on information they received through their social networks. In some cases, this resistance to their labelling as PRS occurred even before they left Syria. The desire to acquire citizenship and not face the administrative hurdles associated with their Palestinianness affected many of the participant’s asylum destination decision making. 64 As such, the hiding of their Palestinianness was pragmatic and can be understood as the participants placing little importance on how transit states labelled them as long as it did not hinder their movement. This stands in stark contrast to the strategic deployment of Palestinianess in states where UNRWA operates, and the resistance to the administrative whitewashing of their Palestinianness in Sweden, to which we turn now. 62 63 64 Interview with Mohammed, 26 years old from Damascus (Tom Rollins, 26 April 2017). Kate Darling, ‘Protection of Stateless People in International Asylum and Refugee Law’ (2009) 21(4) International Journal of Refugee Law 742. Tucker (n 4). 343