2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) default.*” The space of statelessness does not always encompass gender analysis.*8 This is a false assumption — there are currently over 50 countries where there are discriminatory nationality laws against women, with broad and devastating consequences.*? However, in this paper, we choose to focus on indirect discrimination. Allison J Petrozziello points out that there are indirect forms of gender discrimination in nationality laws that play out among populations whose citizenship status is under contestation.*° Her ethnographic work in the Dominican Republic examines the creation of statelessness among Haitian immigrants in the country. Whether such migration was a result of economic necessity or trafficking, finding and maintaining documentation was a significant challenge for Haitian women.*! The governments did not recognise the need for granting proper identification papers to such immigrant women.>* State policy in the Dominican Republic imposes a separate birth registration process for foreign mothers, including undocumented Dominican women of Haitian descent who give birth in the country.°? Gender discrimination becomes a tool to limit access to nationality. Spelling errors made by bureaucrats also become obstacles in the way of proper identity documents being generated and can often constitute sufficient grounds for investigation.°** Without a Dominican identity card, women are not permitted to get a Dominican birth certificate registered for their children.>> Moreover, Dominican fathers are not permitted the right to pass on their nationality in practice to their children if the mother is undocumented.~ In this case, therefore, child statelessness is the most serious outcome of indirect discriminatory practices. D ~The Burdens of Proof Lori has argued that states have created ‘identity management infrastructures’, and in doing so, created a category of marginalised citizens.°’ Thus, it is not sufficient to have citizenship; citizenship is only of value to the extent that it can be proven. In most states, citizenship is zealously guarded, and its value is protected — this leads to a focus on identification and proving citizenship.°’ Documentation is one of the most critical markers of such identification. If we consider citizenship as a form of membership, as discussed above, documentation may be equated to the 47 48 49 50 51 32 53 34 53 56 Lay Lee Tang, Statelessness, Human Rights and Gender: Irregular Migrant Workers from Burma in Thailand (Brill 2005) 11. ibid. Laura van Waas, Zahra Albarazi and Deirdre Brennan, ‘Gender Discrimination in Nationality Laws: Human Rights Pathways to Gender Neutrality’ in Niamh Reilly /nternational Human Rights of Women (Springer Nature eReference 2019) 195—96. Allison J Petrozziello, ‘(Re)Producing Statelessness via Indirect Gender Discrimination: Descendants of Haitian Migrants in the Dominican Republic’ (2019) 57(1) /nternational Migration 213, 214. ibid ibid ibid ibid ibid ibid 217-18. 219. 216-17. 220. 221. 221-22. 57 Lori (n 27) 743. 58D Carolina Nunez, ‘Citizenship Gaps’ (2018) 54(2) Tulsa Law Review 301, 306. 242