Stateless Transnational Migrant Children in South Africa registered are at increased risk of identity fraud (Ball et al., 2017) and gender-based violence (Menz, 2016) and are vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited (Warria and Chikadzi, 2018). Statelessness can be linked to criminal activities, for example, in the fraudulent use of another’s documents such as when (undocumented) parents borrow identity documents to access healthcare. The individual insecurity of disempowered, voiceless, stateless people can also be a destabilizing factor leading to collective/international insecurity especially when individuals feel unjustly targeted and singled out (Van Waas, 2007; Warria, 2016). According to the recently released Stateless Report (ISI, 2020: 12), “the securitisation and instrumentalisation of citizenship policy has led to a wider resurgence of denationalisation, with national security or counter-terrorism arguments” as reasons. According to Paulussen and Scheinin (2020: 226), “…revoking the citizenship of individuals is not conducive to the public good…it is a measure that is problematic from both an international law and (thus also) a security perspective and may sometimes even turn out to be a condition conducive to terrorism.” Links between statelessness and early or forced marriages have often been overlooked (Ball et al., 2014; Menz, 2016; Warria, 2017a). Parents have been found to lie about their daughter’s age in order to meet the minimum marriage age requirements. Moreover, many young girls themselves seek marriage in order to address the instability brought about by statelessness in countries like Jordan, Nepal and Malaysia. Statelessness can thus perpetuate child marriages and vice versa and attempts to fight one implicates the other (Menz, 2016). Challenges linked to statelessness include lack of contact with healthcare and social practitioners and legal protection (Ball et al., 2014). In addition, stateless people have poor prospects – they often lack access to education, do not have a national identity, and are subjected to social stigma and discrimination, violence and harassment (Bhabha, 2017; Lynch and Teff, 2009; UNHCR, 2015). Adults have poor job prospects, often face labor rights violations and rarely have the opportunity to own property (Ball et al., 2014). Statelessness can result in dysfunctional home environments and family separation – both key child development factors (Lynch and Teff, 2009). Both children and adults have been known to be subjected to travel restrictions (Ball et al. 2014). The UNHCR’s study in 2015 is the first study to seek the views of 250 children on what it is like to be stateless. The study was conducted in Côte d’Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Malaysia, Jordan, Thailand and Georgia. Children’s testimonies show that statelessness can impair children’s development, create insurmountable barriers and psychological distress impacting the child, their family and the community as well. Childhood statelessness affects children’s self-esteem and future prospects as they are growing up, even if they eventually acquire nationality in adulthood. In the Nubian Children v Kenya case, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) found the practice of waiting for children to be 18 years old before they can apply for and acquire nationality to be discriminatory. This is because childhood statelessness denies children their right 13