980 S. K. ISHII of competency to marry’ issued by her home country. Ayaka was informed by the Philippines’ embassy that she was not Filipina. Although she produced her Japanese residency card, which stated ‘Philippine, as the officially acknowledged nationality’, the Philippine officers confirmed that she was not registered in the Philippines. The nationality listed on her official Japanese documents was a case of presumptive foreign nationality with no legal basis in the Philippines. This could have been avoided if the children’s mother had registered their nationality soon after their births. However, Ayaka had lost all contact with her Filipina mother and had no means to acquire any documents certifying her mother’s nationality. If the children had learned that they could not acquire Philippine nationality earlier, they could have applied for Japanese nationality based on birth. Japanese nationality law enables this for ‘one who was born in Japan and has had no nationality since the time of birth, and has had a domicile in Japan for three consecutive years or more since then’ (Ministry of Justice 2019, Article 2, [iii]). Ayaka found herself de jure stateless. Ayaka and Hiroto’s vignette reveals what some scholars on migration and citizenship called the ambiguity of statelessness. Scholars have argued that the citizenship rights people enjoy range between full citizenship and complete statelessness (Allerton 2014, 30) and they are negotiated on the ground in local contexts (Choo 2013, 465, 2016, 10; McCargo 2011, 846; Redclift 2013a, 87–88, 2013b, 318). This is especially true for children like Ayaka and Hiroto living in the ‘liminal legal space’ (Redclift 2013a, 170; 2013b, 317; citing Willen 2005, 78). Ayaka’s and Hiroto’s situation exemplifies the ‘semi-citizenship’ (Cohen 2009) and ambiguous statelessness (Belton 2015, 909) that exist between a fully inclusive legal status and fully excluded statelessness (Friedman 2010, 74; McCargo 2011, 846; Mezzadra and Neilson 2012, 62). This situation is relevant to the discussions on transcending the legal/illegal dichotomy that anchors immigration policy (Glenn 2011, 16), citizenship as fluid entities (Bhabha 2009, 413; Redclift 2011, 36), unclear statuses (Redclift 2013a, 174; Weissbrodt and Divine 2015, 870), and graduated statuses (Friedman 2010; Ong 2006, 78–79), revealing that children’s legal statuses are ambiguous during childhood, making it difficult for them to realise their risk of becoming stateless. Considered nationality Both Japanese and foreign authorities (often those of the mother’s home country) can cause abandoned children to ‘misunderstand’ that they have a foreign nationality. Considered nationality includes personal opinions, usually of an official, implying that a stateless person is legitimately qualified for nationality without requiring official registration procedures. Bhabha (2009) argues that these ‘considered nationals’ lack legal identity and the ability to prove legal identity; thus, they may lose access to key state protections (Bhabha 2009, 412–413). Some abandoned children in this study were told by foreign embassy staff members that they were ‘considered to be a national (of our country)’, which instilled a false sense of security that they would be able to prove their nationality in the future. As a result, they missed crucial opportunities to formally register or prove their national identity during their childhood. The next vignette illustrates how considered nationality functions. Masato and Naoto are brothers born in Japan to a Japanese father and Thai mother in the early 1990s. Their parents could have registered their nationality as Thai via their mother or as