2019
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
1(1)
perspective, while still conveying the essential message that statelessness should
be understood though a broad lens. I would recommend a collaborative effort to
develop such a curriculum, and I know that the Institute on Statelessness and
Inclusion has already taken concrete steps in this regard. We should encourage
and actively participate in this work.
In my own law teaching, I have incorporated a module on statelessness into my
instruction on refugee and asylum law; I have created a complex human rights
advocacy simulation on behalf of a simulated stateless client, and live-client work
on behalf of stateless clients in my clinical instruction. Of course, all of these
scenarios are very law-focused, and while I do believe I have successfully
introduced the legal problem of statelessness to students though such instruction,
I have become increasingly aware of the limits of the legal understanding of
statelessness.
Ideally, a statelessness course, followed by a certificate program in
statelessness studies, might lead to the establishment of multi-disciplinary centres
for statelessness studies within a handful of select universities. Such centres could
promote the affiliation of faculty from various disciplines with research awards
for interdisciplinary work. I do not think more than a few centres in each continent
would be feasible, or even desirable, but believe that university centres could
become hubs for research and conferences on statelessness and bring the field to
its next stage of development.
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