77 STAKEHOLDERS 43 INTERVIEWS 17 94 STATELESS PARTICIPANTS 12 INTERVIEWS PARTICIPANTS Ultimately, we interviewed a total of 94 participants: twelve interviews with seventeen stateless participants and forty-three interviews with seventy-seven stakeholders, at least five of whom have lived experience of statelessness. As this indicates, interviews were mostly conducted individually but, in some cases, in a group setting. In addition to the stateless populations discussed in this Report, stakeholders also spoke of working with other groups who identified as stateless, including people from Sri Lanka and South Sudan. Of note, some of the interviewees who agreed to participate as ‘stakeholders’ revealed during the interview that they had their own experience of statelessness, thereby adding a layer of depth to their insights. Those with lived experience represented in this project include people with Rohingya, Palestinian, Kurdish, Syrian/Lebanese, Tibetan and Ethiopian/Eritrean background. They included people within a wide range of age brackets, between ages 18 to 65 years old. Stateless participants had all migrated to Australia through either the onshore or offshore humanitarian program, or the skilled migration program, and most remained on a temporary or permanent visa, with few granted Australian citizenships at the time the interviews occurred (December 2023 – August 2024). Some stateless people interviewed for this Report have since been granted permanency and/or citizenship, but not all. Quotes from these interviews used in this Report, and the ‘Stories of Statelessness’ included in the Appendix to this Report reflect the stateless person’s status at the time of the interview. The stakeholder sectors represented in this Project included legal, health, mental health, torture and trauma services, state government, policy/advocacy/research NGOs, community organisations, community and social service providers, and the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs. Interviews were conducted in Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia in person or via zoom. In some cases, the project team provided a brief introductory presentation to members of an organisation (on request) given the lack of knowledge and understanding of statelessness. This enabled individual participants to understand the project in more depth before agreeing to participate. Exploratory scoping of relevant organisations and individuals in Tasmania and the Northern Territory was conducted at the outset of this Project to ascertain research participants, however researchers were either advised by peak stakeholder organisations in these states and territories that stateless people were not present and/or the snowball method revealed no suitable participants present and/or willing to be interviewed. Understanding Statelessness in Australia | Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness 13