18 • International Journal of Refugee Law, 2026, Vol. 00, Issue 00 4.2. Perceived legal ambiguity and a lack of accountability Bilateral agreements emerge in both contexts because of perceived ambiguity in States’ legal obligations, combined with a lack of legal accountability. As detailed above, states have clear obligations in international law in respect of granting nationality in the particular context of children born in the State’s territory who would otherwise be stateless. Obligations relating to the grant of nationality in respect of other groups are less strongly-worded. This degree of ambiguity can be exploited by States in their refusal to grant their nationality to in situ stateless populations, or their adoption of unique arrangements in an attempt to subvert these obligations. The leeway created by this perceived legal ambiguity is bolstered by a lack of legal accountability for States’ actions in respect of stateless populations. As well as being deemed undesirable, stateless populations are often also disenfranchised, lacking political and economic power and the ability to advocate for their rights. There are no legal mechanisms established to oversee States’ obligations under the 1954 and 1961 statelessness conventions. Neither statelessness convention confers a supervisory role upon the UNHCR, and it was only in 1995 that the UN General Assembly clarified that the UNHCR’s mandate extended to stateless persons who were not also refugees.145 Unlike other international human rights treaties, there are no treaty body committees established under the statelessness conventions. As a result, legal claims by stateless people are limited to claims proceeding in respect of relevant human rights treaties and regional human rights courts. Mathew Coleman, ‘A Geopolitics of Engagement: Neoliberalism, the War on Terrorism, and the Reconfiguration of US Immigration Enforcement’ (2007) 12 Geopolitics 607, 621. 142 See E Tendayi Achiume, ‘Migration as Decolonization’ (2019) 71 Stanford Law Review 1509; Lucy Mayblin, Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2017). 143 See Jef Huysmans, The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU (Routledge 2006). 144 See Daniel Ghezelbash and Nikolas Feith Tan, ‘The End of the Right to Seek Asylum? COVID-19 and the Future of Refugee Protection’ (2020) 32 International Journal of Refugee Law 668. 145 ‘Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (n 101) [14]. 141 Downloaded from academic.oup.com/ijrl/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ijrl/eeag028/8767365 by guest on 08 October 2026 Bilateral agreements adopted in response to asylum seekers and irregular migrants are also directed towards a population deemed undesirable by States. These agreements are concluded with the purpose of preventing these groups from entering into the country and often also seek to contain these groups in their countries and regions of origin. The perceived undesirability of asylum seekers and irregular migrants is a product of many factors, including the framing of irregular border crossings as a crime and thus the labelling of these groups as ‘illegal’. Indeed, extraterritorial migration policies can be understood as pre-emptive punishments taken against those who pose the threat of a future irregular border crossing.141 Asylum seekers and irregular migrants are often deemed ‘undesirable’ for other interrelated reasons, including racism and other ideological and structural legacies of colonialism;142 nationalism and anxieties about demographic change; religious discrimination (particularly Islamophobia); the perception that asylum seekers and irregular migrants are seeking access to the territory in order to secure welfare and other forms of governmental assistance; the idea that asylum seekers and irregular migrants are not only committing a crime through irregular entry but represent national security risks, including terrorism risks;143 and, particularly since 2020, the view that these groups present biomedical risks.144 Like in situ stateless populations, asylum seekers and irregular migrants are often perceived as undesirable by states, so increasingly states are turning to other states to rid themselves of these populations.