Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2015/04 The reasons for this are varied, however discrimination against the Vietnamese as a minority is said to be a prominent cause of barriers21. Whilst it is important to spell out the threat of statelessness faced by the Vietnamese in Cambodia, my intention is to provide a nuanced perspective of the lives of the children themselves to illustrate the ways that they have come to enact an alternative citizenry despite their uncertain status. In so doing the normative discourse around nationality being the bedrock of civic activity is not only challenged, but broadened to include the voice and acts of those who otherwise are not recognised. 3. Rethinking speech and the politics of recognition through Acts of Citizenship The juridico-philosophical discussion regarding statelessness identifies it with voicelessness.22 Populations who face either de jure statelessness23 or have undetermined nationality are ‘dehumanised’ and denied supposedly inalienable rights.24 Perceivably rendered to ‘bare life’,25 stateless populations lack access to rights, therefore legal advocates work towards the durable solution of creating a legal bond between a person and a state. Ensuring citizenship as legal status is often seen as an essential element to ensuring meaningful enjoyment and inclusion in other distinct dimensions, for instance citizenship as rights, political participation, and as identity.26 Exclusion from this legal experience of citizenship, it has been argued, reduces any actions taken by individuals to be included as meaningless. The rationale behind such arguments stem from the idea that the stateless without ‘protection statuses’ not only lack civic rights, but the ‘right to have rights’27 - “the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective”.28 What makes speech and actions meaningful are their ability to make a difference,29 and in order to make a difference one must have an ability to be heard. Following this rationale, citizenship as legal status enables political participation and a claim to rights which are reserved for those who belong as citizens. In the words of Parekh, the logic then follows that without the capacity to form meaningful opinions, one cannot be part of the political realm. For Arendt, following Aristotle, this is to be deprived of my very humanity. Speech, action and opinion are intimately bound up with not only our humanity, but also with the constitution of ourselves as individuals.30 In the discourse surrounding statelessness, meaningful speech is usually identified by its overt political nature - speech that is recognised by authorities who then answer and act upon what has been said 21R Amer, ‘Domestic Political Change and Ethnic Minorities'(n 13); Tarr (n 13); Berman (n 14). H Arendt, ‘“The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”’, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Meridian Books 1951); D Tubb, ‘Statelessness and Colombia: Hannah Arendt and the Failure of Human Rights’ (2006) 3 Undercurrent 40; P Hayden, ‘From Exclusion to Containment: Arendt, Sovereign Power, and Statelessness’ (2008) 3 Societies Without Borders 248; UNHCR, ‘UNHCR Statement: Stateless and Voiceless in the EU’ (No Hate Speech Movement, 2014) <http://blog.nohatespeechmovement.org/unhcr-statement-stateless-and-voiceless-in-the-eu/> accessed 3 September 2015. 23 “A person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”, Article 1 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. 24 H Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Meridian Books 1971). 25 G Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford University Press 1998). 26 L Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized (The State of Citizenship Symposium)’ (2000) 7 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 447. 27 Arendt, ‘“The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”' (n 22). 28 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (n 24) 296, quoted in Serena Parekh, ‘Hannah Arendt and Global Justice’ (2013) 8 Philosophy Compass 771, n 44. 29 Isin (n 9). 30 Parekh (n 28) 48. 22 3