Leaving No One Behind: Statelessness and the Sustainable Development Goals There are also groups such as the “Latvian non-citizens” who have naturalized as Latvian on the basis of the legal residence granted to former Soviet citizens who remained in Latvia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.63 However, unless a country has a formal statelessness determination procedure that provides a legal residence status,64 naturalization is likely to be inaccessible to stateless persons. The studies generally find that the benefits of naturalization are greatest for those whose status was previously lowest. Thus, the benefits to society and State are likely to be higher for those who were previously not recognized as nationals of any State. We can also draw analogies with studies of the impact of special amnesty programmes to regularize the status of irregular migrants. Stateless people are indeed often considered irregular migrants by State authorities, even though in many cases they are living in their country of birth and lifelong residence. The literature shows that irregular migrants are often forced to work in hazardous and exploitative employment; they are excluded from welfare benefits and public services; their free movement is constrained; and generally they have weaker bargaining power in the labour market. Immigrants with a more stable residence status in the host country have better employment outcomes.65 Stateless persons treated as irregular are thus likely to experience significant improvements in their status if granted nationality. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2023, which focused on migrants and refugees and the societies in which they live, emphasized the potential benefits of migration both to migrants themselves and to the societies in which they live. For these benefits to be realized, policies should facilitate the social and economic integration of migrants and refugees, not least by ensuring that they have a secure legal status.66 The same principles apply to stateless persons who lack any form of legal residence status, often in the only country that they have ever known. Even if recognition or grant of nationality is not an immediate possibility, regularization of legal status in a country permits stateless persons to contribute to that society and improve their own circumstances. The World Bank notes that the lack of any possibility of permanent legal status in a country can be a driver of “high-risk irregular movements” in order to seek economic opportunity, mentioning long-term refugees in particular.67 The report thus highlights the potential of “intermediate solutions that fall short of permanent State protection (citizenship with formal political membership and associated rights)” in enabling the social and economic integration of such populations.68 A legal residence status short of nationality may indeed in some cases be a temporary solution to some forms of precarity, however there is a risk of creating a permanent body of second-class stateless residents if such a status does not establish a clear pathway to the acquisition of nationality. The Overseas Development Institute has also highlighted the importance of secure legal status for migrants, whether permanent residence or nationality, placing particular emphasis on access to nationality for those born in a country, in order to foster integration and economic inclusion and contribute to peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG16).69 The International Monetary Fund has, moreover, found “robust evidence” that laws providing for attribution of nationality based on birth in the territory “lead to higher income levels than alternative citizenship rules in developing countries” especially in those countries with a weaker institutional environment.70 63. Artjoms Ivļevs and Roswitha M. King, “From immigrants to (non-)citizens: political economy of naturalisations in Latvia”, IZA Journal of Migration 1, No. 1 (2012): 14, https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-9039-1-14. 64. There are very few states that do so. For examples of those that do, however, see UNHCR, “Good practices paper – Action 6”. 65. Francesco Fasani, “Understanding the role of immigrants’ legal status: evidence from policy experiments”, CESifo Economic Studies 61, Nos 3–4 (2015): 722–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/cesifo/ifv006. 66. World Bank, “World Development Report 2023: migrants, refugees, and societies” (Washington, D.C., April 2023), 180, www.worldbank.org/en/ publication/wdr2023. 67. World Bank, 222 see also Figure 7.11 p.225. 68. World Bank, 226. 69. Katy Long et al., “Citizenship, migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, in Migration and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2017), www.odi.org/publications/10911-citizenship-migration-and-2030-agenda-sustainabledevelopment. 70. Patrick A. Kpodar and Kangni R. Imam, “Does an inclusive citizenship law promote economic development?” (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2019), www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/01/11/Does-an-Inclusive-Citizenship-Law-Promote-Economic-Development-46331. 29