JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 981 Japanese as stateless persons born and raised in Japan. However, their parents did not attempt neither. The orphanage staff who took care of their case recalled that, although the father loved his wife and children, he seemed to have avoided registering the children because he was afraid his wife’s undocumented status would be discovered. As a result, Masato and Naoto were de facto stateless. At six and four years old, respectively, Masato and Naoto believed their considered nationality was Thai. According to the orphanage staff, when Naoto was five and Masato was three, their mother suddenly ‘left home’, and their father approached the child guidance centres, claiming that he could not care for them because of work. Soon after, they moved to the orphanage, and child protective service officials discovered that both children and their parents’ marriage were unregistered. The officials approached the Thai consul in Japan, submitting a copy of the mother’s expired Thai passport. Until 2008, if Japanese fathers did not complete the official procedure of ‘before birth acknowledgement’ for a child born to a foreign national partner with whom they were not married, the child had almost no legal means to acquire Japanese nationality (Suzuki 2015). After several months, ‘they finally received good news’ (orphanage staff member, January 1, 2018). The Thai consul official told the Japanese child protective services that, according to the documents that were sent, the children were Thai nationals. The orphanage staff thus ‘felt great knowing their Thai nationality was acknowledged by their government’ (interview, January 1, 2018). After that, Masato and Naoto ‘became Thai’ both by their identification and via official documents issued by the Japanese government. The orphanage staff did request the children’s passports from the Thai consulate ‘simply because both children did not have any plan to go abroad’ (orphanage staff member, January 1, 2018). The staff believed that ‘the embassy staff says they are Thai. So, they could receive them anytime they apply, anyway’ (orphanage staff member, January 1, 2018). In reality, although Masato and Naoto believed themselves to be Thai, they were not registered as Thai nationals in Thailand. Until their mid-twenties, because they believed themselves to have a national identity, Masato and Naoto continued to miss opportunities to register their nationalities, and their status shifted over time from de facto to de jure stateless. The children’s father, who visited them regularly, died five years after they moved to the orphanage. According to Japanese law, this presented an opportunity for them to acquire Japanese nationality if they had applied for it within three years of their father’s death (Ishikawa 1991). However, Masato and Naoto believed they were Thai, and the adults caring for them and surrounding them did not consider applying for Japanese nationality, as they also believed the children to be Thai (orphanage staff member, January 1, 2018). After almost two decades of separation from their parents, Masato and Naoto suddenly found themselves stateless. At 22, several years after leaving the orphanage, Masato was arrested for fighting and possessing illegal drugs. The Japanese government revoked his visa and ordered his deportation to Thailand. However, the Thai authorities did not accept Masato because he was not a Thai national. Masato ultimately recognised that his status depended on the testimony of an unknown officer from two decades ago, which lacked any formal authority in Thailand. As Masato and Naoto’s ties with their mother had been severed for decades, there was no way to certify their Thai nationality. At 22 years old, Masato could not claim a child’s right to Japanese nationality. The only way he could acquire Japanese nationality was