TILBURG LAW REVIEW Journal of International and European Law Barbara von Rütte, ‘Social Identity and the Right to Belong – The ECtHR’s Judgment in Hoti v. Croatia’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review pp. 147–155. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.150 RESEARCH ARTICLE Social Identity and the Right to Belong – The ECtHR’s Judgment in Hoti v. Croatia Barbara von Rütte* The article analyses the judgment of Hoti v. Croatia of the European Court of Human Rights which has to be seen as a landmark case for the rights of stateless persons in Europe. Recognizing the particular vulnerability of stateless persons, the Court finds a violation of the right to private life in Croatia’s failure to provide for an effective and accessible regularisation mechanism. Moreover, as this contribution argues, the Hoti case can be seen as a consolidation of the ECtHR’s social identity approach to protect the social ties of migrants in respect of the right to remain, the right to a legal status and the right to citizenship in the state of residence. Keywords: Human Rights; ECHR; Right to Private Life; Citizenship; Nationality; Statelessness; Social Identity; Regularisation 1 Introduction On 26 April 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in the case of Hoti v. Croatia.1 The judgment is a landmark case for the rights of stateless persons under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).2 The Court recognises the applicant’s statelessness as a central feature of the case. Having the particular background of the dissolution of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in mind, it examines how statelessness affects Mr Hoti’s access to the rights guaranteed by the Convention and how the lack of documentation and of access to official registers impedes every attempt to regularise his legal status as a long-time resident in Croatia and thus fails to protect his right to private life. A second noteworthy aspect of the case of Hoti v. Croatia is how the Court consolidates its social identity approach to safeguard the rights of non-citizens in Convention states.3 Even though the ECHR does not explicitly guarantee a right to a particular legal status or to citizenship, the case law under Article 8 ECHR recognises the relevance of a person’s social ties from a human rights perspective. Questions of membership, belonging and citizenship form the core of a person’s identity and private life.4 As will be argued, this approach to migrants’ social identity entails an implicit recognition of a right to remain, a right to a legal status and a right to citizenship for non-citizens on the basis of their center of life. After first setting out the facts of the case (2), this contribution will summarize the judgment in Hoti v. Croatia and discuss how the Strasbourg judges approach the issue of statelessness as well as the right to regularisation and a stable residence status (3). The article will then trace the development of the Court’s social identity approach and argue that the recognition of migrants’ social ties and networks becomes increasingly important in safeguarding the rights of non-citizens to residence and membership under the Convention (4). * PhD Fellow, Center for Migration Law, Universität Bern, Switzerland, barbara.vonruette@gmx.ch 1 Hoti v. Croatia [2018] ECtHR Application No. 63311/14. 2 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 4 November 1950, ETS No. 5; See also Katja Swider, ‘Hoti v. Croatia – a Landmark Decision by the European Court of Human Rights on Residence Rights of a Stateless Person’ (European Network on Statelessness Blog, 3 May 2018) <https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/hoti-v-croatia-landmark-decision-european-court-human-rights-residence-rights-stateless-person> accessed 3 January 2019; Hélène Lambert, ‘Nationality and Statelessness Before the European Court of Human Rights: A Landmark Judgment but What about Article 3 ECHR?’ (Strasbourg Observers, 16 May 2018) <https://strasbourgobservers.com/> accessed 3 January 2019. 3 For the categories of non-citizens see David Weissbrodt and Michael Divine, ‘Unequal Access to Human Rights: The Categories of Noncitizenship’ (2015) 19 Citizenship Studies 870. 4 See also the Dissenting Opinion of Judge Pinto de Albuquerque in Ramadan v. Malta [2016] ECtHR Application No. 76136/12.