Chapter 1. Introduction 1.6. CONCLUDING R EMARKS In this study, the main question is how European law contributes to preventing and solving statelessness in Europe and what this adds to our understanding of nationality today, including the consideration that is given to administrative issues in nationality matters. This chapter introduced the issue of statelessness, the relevance of this research, and the methods and sources used. It also showed how statelessness and nationality or citizenship can be understood from a legal perspective, and how the strength of connections between a person and a state, as well as administration, registration and identification play an important role in this. From this chapter can be drawn that there is an undeniable link between nationality and (human) rights and protection thereof: persons without nationality remain among the most vulnerable in the world. In legal norms on these matters at the international level and in regions outside Europe, obligations for states have been created in relation to nationality matters and the reduction of statelessness. There is also clear ‘rights language’ visible in international and regional law on this topic: individuals, and in particular children, have been given a right to a nationality to claim. Furthermore, another human rights dimension to preventing and solving statelessness has been created with the principle of non-discrimination, which applies to nationality laws and can be helpful in addressing, for example, gender discrimination in such laws or laws that discriminate against minorities. Indeed, all ‘categories’ of substantive legal norms on preventing and solving statelessness identified in the analytical framework 264 contain human rights aspects: the human right of children to birth registration and to acquire a nationality, the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality, everyone’s right to a nationality and the principle of non-discrimination. Inescapably, this research thus takes a human rights perspective in order to understand properly European legal norms on preventing and solving statelessness, as well as the legal categorizations of reality through concepts like nationality and statelessness. In the next Chapter, the European context in which European legal instruments operate is studied. Chapter 2 also aims to delineate the analytical framework further, before looking in more depth at European law on preventing and solving statelessness in Part II. 264 See para 1.5.3. Intersentia 49