The impact for people subjected to different visas with different applicable conditions was also observed by legal practitioners. “It’s really mixed….some have had work rights and then through that have been able to get Medicare, but without work rights you’re not entitled to Medicare. So a lot of people don’t have work rights, don’t have study rights and they’re effectively languishing and have no access to any support services. And that impacts what services will engage with them around housing as well. If you’re without a Bridging Visa a lot of places won’t support you.” — Michaela Rhode, Australian Legal Practitioner, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Confusion as to different visa pathways within stateless community groups was further observed by research participants. Case study: “I’ll just give a story about a woman who I’m representing at the moment around capturing people’s everyday experiences on Nauru. She keeps calling me—it’s just an example of how difficult it is to explain these concepts. So, she’s a Rohingya lady, and she keeps calling me, saying that she knows some of her friends in the community with kids that have gotten citizenship, and she doesn’t understand why her family hasn’t. But none of the kids or her were born in Australia, and I keep explaining it again and again, but understandably, she gets really upset each time she calls me, and she just doesn’t understand the discrepancy, and keeps asking for legal advice and legal assistance. And we just keep repeating the same thing, and have passed her onto various other services, but obviously, they give her the same advice. So, I’ve just noticed that within the community, there seems to be some sort of confusion …(people are) really unclear what their long-term status is.” — Australian Legal Practitioner Nicki Lees, Maurice Blackburn Varying rights and entitlements for stateless people in Australia, as ascribed by the various types of temporary protection visa they are on, was observed to increase the risk of exploitation for stateless people, particularly in employment settings. “So either in terms of being underpaid, being paid as little as $12 a day for eight hours of manual labour work. I’ve seen women experience sexual exploitation in the workplace. I’ve seen—what else happens? I mean at the very extreme end of things people’s documents being taken and being held in regional areas, working in farm work and being—their wages are deducted to cover their rent and their food, etc. So they’re actually not getting paid anything and they’re locked in rooms when they’re not at work.” — Michaela Rhode, Australian Legal Practitioner, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre 46 Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness | Understanding Statelessness in Australia Visa insecurity has a marked detrimental impact on the mental health of stateless people.99 Mental Health professionals interviewed for this study observed how visa uncertainty can inhibit a stateless person’s ability to process trauma, plan for the future, or achieve stability. “(For) my asylum seeker clients in particular who are stateless, until a visa situation is resolved, it’s really hard to resolve those trauma symptoms and process that trauma because they’re not fully safe yet.” — Psychologist, Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Provider The urgency of securing a particular visa to overcome barriers to essential rights and entitlements was a recurring theme in several interviews for this study. Citizenship was also cited as critical mechanism for resolving statelessness. “Reducing statelessness is only going to be achieved by someone achieving citizenship, and that would give them a state that accepts responsibility for them as one of their citizens.” — Refugee Support Worker As discussed elsewhere in this Report, however, access to citizenship for stateless people is often complicated due to lack of documentation and language barriers. Lengthy processing times for applications (in the absence of mandated decision making time-frames) further compound stateless people’s feelings of limbo and uncertainty. “We got her daughter her Australian citizenship certificate and it was like, “Okay.” There was an end in sight but that took 10 years so that’s 10 years of limbo for not only Mum but also a child and that can have a big impact on them. I think just the relentlessness of it.” — Australian Legal Practitioner As noted, access to visa categories is shaped by how Australia identifies and treats different individuals within the same communities, with reference to factors such as mode and date of arrival and detention history. This underscores the structural inequities embedded in Australia’s migration system, where chance factors, such as date, or even time of arrival, or birth in detention— can lead to radically different outcomes for stateless people, fostering feelings of injustice and fragmentation within communities. In contrast, one (formerly) stateless participant interviewed for this Report had arrived in Australia on a skilled visa pathway, something that remains extremely rare due to challenges stateless people have in proving their identity, connecting with sponsors and funding their relocation. Arriving on a permanent visa with a clear path to naturalisation, along with support for resettlement made for a much more positive experience of living stateless in Australia.