2 • International Journal of Refugee Law, 2026, Vol. 00, Issue 00 See eg Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, ‘Outsourcing Asylum: The Advent of Protection Lite’ in Luiza Bialasiewicz (ed) Europe in the World: EU Geopolitics and the Making of European Space (Ashgate 2011). 3 David Scott FitzGerald, ‘Remote Control of Migration: Theorising Territoriality, Shared Coercion, and Deterrence’ (2020) 46 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 4, referring to the use of ‘remote control’ by Aristide Zolberg in 1997 to describe the transatlantic system of visas that emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries: ‘The Great Wall against China’ in Jan Lucassen and Leo Luccasen (eds) Migration, Migration History and History: New Perspectives (Peter Lang 1997) 111. 4 See Mariagiulia Giuffré and Violeta Moreno-Lax, ‘The Rise of Consensual Containment: From “Contactless Control” to “Contactless Responsibility” for Migratory Flows’ in Satvinder Singh Juss (ed) Research Handbook on International Refugee Law (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019). 5 James Hathaway, ‘The Emerging Politics of Non-Entrée’ (1992) 91 Refugees 40. 6 Nikolas Feith Tan, ‘Conceptualising Externalisation: Still Fit for Purpose?’ (2021) Forced Migration Review 8, 8. 7 See eg Azadeh Dastyari, Amy Nethery and Asher Hirsch (eds) Refugee Externalisation Policies: Responsibility, Legitimacy and Accountability (Routledge 2022); Elaine McGregor and others, ‘Conditionality, Compensation, or Both? Comparative Experiences of Third-Country Cooperation on Migration with the EU’ (2025) 23 Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 47; Sebastian Cobarrubias and Paolo Novak, ‘Embedding Externalisation: How Bordering Practices Transform Places’ (2025) 30 Geopolitics 1; Ermioni Xanthopoulou, ‘Mapping EU Externalisation Devices through a Critical Eye’ (2024) 26 European Journal of Migration 108; Steffen Angenendt and others, ‘The Externalisation of European Refugee Protection: A Legal, Practical and Political Assessment of Current Proposals’ (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik 2024); Tan (n 6); Inka Stock, Ayşen Üstübici and Susanne U Schultz, ‘Externalization at Work: Responses to Migration Policies from the Global South’ (2019) 7 Comparative Migration Studies 48; GammeltoftHansen (n 2); Emma Haddad, ‘The External Dimension of EU Refugee Policy: A New Approach to Asylum?’ (2008) 43 Government and Opposition 190. 8 But see Fiorella Rabuffetti and Emily Regan Wills, ‘The Problem with the Comoros Solution: Affect, Citizenship, Statelessness and the Kuwaiti Bidoon’ (2025) 29 Citizenship Studies 77; Yoana Kuzmova, ‘Statelessness Elimination Through Legal Fiction: The United Arab Emirates’ Comorian Minority’ Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship (Manchester University Press 2021); Noora Lori, Offshore Citizens: Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press 2019). 9 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons under the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (UNHCR 2014) 25. 2 Downloaded from academic.oup.com/ijrl/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ijrl/eeag028/8767365 by guest on 08 October 2026 to as ‘outsourcing’,2 ‘remote control’,3 ‘contactless’ migration control,4 and ‘non-entrée’.5 Bilateral responses to asylum seeking and irregular migration are occurring within the context of a broader ‘externalisation’ of migration functions. ‘Externalisation’ has been described as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing ‘any migration control measure…undertaken either unilaterally or multilaterally, either extraterritorially or with extraterritorial effects’.6 The externalization of migration functions and the adoption of bilateral agreements for this purpose have been well studied.7 However, it is less well known8 that some States have adopted or contemplated bilateral agreements as a response to in situ statelessness: stateless populations who are not migrants within a state’s territory but who are in their ‘own country’.9 These agreements take the form of the payment of money to a country, in the form of direct investment, in exchange for the supply of passports for the first country’s own stateless population. This article examines the legality of the extraordinary arrangement made between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Comoros and the similar agreement with the Comoros considered by Kuwait. It argues that bilateral agreements on statelessness can also be understood as attempts by States to outsource their protection obligations. Framing these agreements as practices of outsourcing protection reveals lessons for bilateral agreements in the context of irregular migration and asylum seeking. Moreover, this article argues that bilateral agreements in both contexts are indicative of two parallel trends: the deterritorialization of protection (the erasure of the link between presence on the territory and the triggering of protection obligations under international law) and its increasing commodification.