Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2016/02 4. CASE 2: Reception of Stateless Asylum Seekers upon arrival in Europe With resettlement possibilities through official channels (including that facilitated by UNHCR) extremely limited for stateless Kurds, many now feel they have no choice but to travel illegally to Europe. This leaves the stateless particularly vulnerable to exploitation by smugglers and puts them at risk of protection concerns when unable to present documents to the police in countries on the way. Several anecdotes were relayed about detention of ajanib and maktumeen in Turkey, Greece and the Balkan countries, with some reporting aggression or violence from officials. Moreover, their lack of regular identity papers can mean that the authorities struggle to classify stateless Kurds by nationality when filtering asylum seekers, resulting in arrest, denial of further access and restriction of mobility. The second case study below highlights the complications that can be experienced by stateless Kurds arriving in Europe as well as exposing some of the assumptions underpinning the legal process when it comes to their reception and treatment by European authorities. Komelgeha Qamishlo [Qamishli housing estate] is a group of 88 houses built in 2007 by the Kurdistan government besides what has today become the sprawling Domiz refugee camp, some five kilometres west of Duhok, in order to relocate a section of the families who had arrived in 2004. Known as the ‘2004 houses’, the new accommodation provides a more substantial option than that in Muqable camp. Nonetheless, approximately half of the families who had originally moved to Komelgeha Qamsihlo have departed for Europe, leaving a strong sense of loss within the community. Many of those who travelled had stateless family members, and currently some 10-15 large families remain who are affected by statelessness. Shivan, who lived as a maktum in Syria, is now quite exceptionally a lawyer assisting other Syrian Kurds with problems relating to nationality and residency in KR-I. After coming to Kurdistan in 2004, Shivan’s father was able to activate a claim for Iraqi citizenship having served there with the Kurdish liberation movement forces during the 1950s. Shivan was later able to acquire an Iraqi passport for himself and hopes to be able to register his children as Iraqi citizens also. His professional engagements and own experiences have made him knowledgeable about the situation and suffering of the stateless Kurdish community from Syria. Shivan’s still-maktum brother, for example, had hoped to improve the situation for his family by going to Europe. However, German authorities were unfamiliar with his status, and he has remained in an “asylum camp” for six months awaiting his initial immigration interview. Due to his tired financial and psychological situation, Shivan is now advising his brother to give up on Europe and return back to Kurdistan (again through illegal travel), where at least he can be with his wife and children (whom Shivan is supporting in his absence). “Even if my brother is given residency, there is no guarantee that his family could go to him,” says the lawyer, having himself worked on cases where maktumeen have been unable to join their immediate relatives through family reunification as they need a Syrian passport – stamped from Damascus – for reunification travel. “My brother is now depressed, and after six months we have no indication how he will even be treated as a maktum. We hear of other cases in Europe where maktumeen are considered with little sympathy.” It is evident that in many cases status determination for stateless persons is not happening upon arrival and during initial registration in countries of European asylum. 12 stateless Kurds in Germany [7], Switzerland [1], Sweden [3] and Austria [1] (representing 74 family members in the same situation) mentioned that, having spent between three and nine months in the country of asylum, they had all 6