Degrees of Statelessness Korea as marriage migrants. 8 However, not all marriages result in successful, long-term unions. Each year, many Vietnamese women repatriate back home after divorce and/or separation from their Taiwanese or Korean husbands. 9 In recent years, the women have returned home increasingly accompanied by children born from these marriages. The children born in Taiwan, Korea and (more recently) China receive nationality through the jus sanguinis laws of their countries of birth. However, due to difficulties in formalising legal arrangements for divorce and custody, 10 many of these children travel to Vietnam without valid legal paperwork or documentation, and without parental understanding of the legal requirements for their migration. As a result, many of the children have precarious legal status and are in danger of facing a life on the fringes of society. Although their situations are varied, we argue that these cases fall on a legal spectrum of different degrees of de facto statelessness. In many cases their lack of household registration — ho khau — has resulted in ‘ineffective nationality’, which we argue is de facto statelessness as it results in a lack of social rights and raises serious concerns about the future status of the children and their livelihoods. We further argue that efforts to solve statelessness, which include prevention through procedural measures, should extend to de facto statelessness. In Part I of this article we set out our conceptual framework; in Part II we describe our data collection and explain our case study in more detail. We explain how it has expanded our understanding of de facto statelessness through an analysis of Vietnam’s current nationality laws. In Part III we explain the significance of the ho khau system and focus on Vietnam’s nationality laws and responses to the issue of statelessness. We set out the gaps in the existing legal framework as they apply to the children of returned marriage migrants. In conclusion, we canvass possible measures and procedures which could address issues of de facto statelessness in this context. Briefly, the research uncovered four groups of children. It is important to stress that these children are not de jure stateless (or at least it was assumed they were not) but suffer disadvantage and discrimination because of their lack of legal and or effective Vietnamese nationality. This is primarily because of the difficulties in registering returned children for ho khau as explained in Part III. But further, as explained in Part I, children have particular rights under international law to a nationality and identity. Although we did not focus on these rights in our current data collection, they are issues which underpin our understanding of de facto statelessness in this context. 8 9 10 The numbers vary according to different sources each year and are most consistent within receiving countries. Although the Vietnamese government does not publish marriage migration statistics according to region or province, interviews with stakeholders in the Delta estimate that approximately 1,000 women were leaving the Mekong Delta region as marriage migrants on an annual basis as recently as August 2018. Brandais York and Sayomi Ariyawansa, Interview with Ms Tham, Chairman of Policy, Women’s Union, Can Tho City, (Can Tho, Vietnam, 3 August 2018). In both Korea and Taiwan, the nationality and immigration laws have responded to problems caused by high divorce rates and ‘domestic violence’ in international marriages, which are well documented: Susan Kneebone, ‘Transnational Marriage Migrants and Nationality: the Cases of South Korea and Taiwan’ (Conference Paper, International Academic Conference, November 2017). ibid. See also Hyun Mee Kim, Shinhye Park and Ariun Shukhertei, ‘Returning Home: Marriage Migrants’ Legal Precarity and the Experience of Divorce’ (2017) 49(1) Critical Asian Studies 38. 71