Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness World War I and received large numbers of Belgian refugees that crossed the border to safety.313 The enormous devastation caused by the war on the fighting fronts and beyond, but also the aftermath of the war, caused large-scale movements and evacuation of people. It was furthermore considered a war that was different from any war before because of the number of casualties, the immense destruction that it caused, but also because it kick-started innovation in some areas, and had all kinds of economic and social consequences as well.314 Importantly for this study, it resulted in statelessness on a large scale. Below, this chapter addresses the main causes of the emergence of mass statelessness in Europe and the (legal) responses thereto by European states, also discussing the different groups of people that became stateless. The scale on which statelessness emerged in the context of World War I was new. In his piece on the legal status of stateless people in World War I and II, Marc Vishniak distinguished between individual causes of statelessness and causes of mass statelessness.315 Individual causes of statelessness, such as people who remain stateless at birth or who become stateless by marriage, are the result of conflicts of law and were not considered ‘new’ – these had already existed before the War. Whereas these causes of statelessness certainly contributed to the creation of statelessness, they were not the important causes for statelessness becoming a large-scale problem. These were, inter alia, related to the preoccupation of states to determine ‘who is in and who is out’ using documents, registrations and controlling movements of people. Indeed, John Torpey writes how actions directed towards that goal during World War I “led to the consolidation of views about foreigners and methods for restricting their movements that would prove to be an enduring part of the world”316 and how “[t]he (re)imposition of passport controls by numerous West European countries and the United States during the First World War and their persistence after the war was an essential aspect of [a] ‘révolution identificatoire’ that vastly enhanced the ability of governments to identify their citizens, to distinguish them from non-citizens, and thus to construct themselves as ‘nation-states’”.317 Because of the war, large numbers of people fled and had been evacuated all over Europe: refugees became an international problem for states and policy-makers in the 313 314 315 316 317 On the Netherlands during World War I, see for instance Paul Moeyes, Buiten Schot. Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog 1914–1918 (digital ed, Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers 2011). Andreas Dorpalen, Europe in the 20th Century. A History (Macmillan 1968) 13. Marc Vishniak, ‘The Legal Status of Stateless Persons’ in AG Duker (ed), Pamphlet Series: Jews and the Post-War World (No. 6, American Jewish Committee 1945). Note that Vishniak defi nes statelessness as “an individual’s lack of nationality” (7) and stateless people as “individuals who are not connected with any country by ties of citizenship or nationality” (11). Th is defi nition resembles the current defi nition of statelessness in international law, which also highlights the lack of nationality. John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge University Press 2000) 111. Ibid, 121. Intersentia 61