JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 979 Hochschild (2009, 25) called a ‘female, mobile service worker’ engaged in ‘stigmatized nightlife industries’ (Suzuki 2015, 114). When the second child (Hiroto) was born, the mother told her maternity clinic nurse that she could not care for the children because she had to return to work. Soon after, both Hiroto (newborn) and Ayaka (three years old) were sent to an orphanage. At this stage, presumptive foreign nationality was first attached to the children. The officers at the child guidance centre discovered that the children’s nationality had not been officially registered in either Japan or the Philippines, their parents had not registered their marriage, and their Japanese father had not legally acknowledged his children. The officer registered the children with the Japanese authorities as Philippine nationals with visas that had ‘special permission to stay in Japan’. No one confirmed whether the children were registered as nationals in the Philippines or even checked their mother’s passport, ‘as everyone knew the mother’s passport had expired anyway’ (orphanage staff member, December 26, 2018). People saw the children as Filipinos ‘because everyone knew their mother was Filipina’ (orphanage staff member, 26 December 2018). Thus, Hiroto and Ayaka were officially considered Philippine nationals in Japan. However, as they were unregistered in the Philippines, the children were de facto stateless. Growing up with a foreigner’s residence card8 with ‘Filipino/Filipina’ in the nationality column, they identified as Philippine nationals. There were opportunities to register Hiroto and Ayaka’s potential nationalities until they were six years old. At the time, both their parents lived near the orphanage, and their mother sometimes visited. If their mother had registered them in the Philippines, they might have been able to acquire citizenship. If that application had been rejected, they would have been able to apply for Japanese nationality as stateless children born and residing in Japan (Ministry of Justice 2019). However, no one encouraged the parents to register the children’s nationalities. The orphanage staff remembered thinking that ‘the children were officially acknowledged as Filipino, meaning that the children would have been able to acquire a Philippine passport anytime they needed’. They could not imagine that the Japanese authorities’ acknowledgement of foreign nationality did not have a parallel meaning for the Philippine authorities. Over the next decade, the children gradually lost the opportunity to certify their nationalities. However, no one recognised this, including the children. Some years after the children arrived at the orphanage, their mother reported that she did not live with their father anymore, saying simply, ‘He has just disappeared’. The children’s mother abruptly returned to the Philippines seven years later, although she continued to call her children occasionally. However, three years later, her mobile phone number suddenly was disconnected, and for unknown reasons, she no longer contacted her children. Afterwards, Hiroto and Ayaka were sent to a Japanese orphanage with a presumptive Philippine nationality. They did not have any official identity information issued by the Philippines nor any official identity information issued by Japan. The adults caring for the children were aware that the children’s status had gradually shifted from de facto to de jure statelessness, although the children themselves were unaware. When the children were in their early twenties, they found themselves stateless. However, by then, it was ‘too late’. Ayaka left the orphanage when she turned 18 years old. A couple of years later, she conceived a child with a Japanese partner. They decided to get married, and a municipal officer instructed Ayaka to submit an ‘affidavit