forms of dispossession through the means of eradication of the right to life with dignity, normalization of premature death, and forcible transfers of capital. No wonder states and societies find it so difficult to name and count those whose losses are their gain. Narrating the Future? Disciplinary Illusions Statelessness is to be recognised not only as a violation of the 'right to a nationality' dictated by the post-WWII international human rights frameworks. It is the root cause of a cascade of rights abuses, threats and violations that create novel forms of structural vulnerability. The pathways by which individuals become or remain stateless include denationalisation, exclusionary citizenship laws, and inequalities that obstruct either registration and naturalisation, and they often lead to regimes of discrimination against select populations (Kingston 2017, Canefe 2020). Structural barriers that emerge as a result of being stateless curtail the full protection these communities are assumed to have benefitted from being under the purview of citizenship laws. Here, I will first argue that there is no such natural relationship between citizenship and protection of rights. Furthermore, a critical analysis of the dynamics of the citizenship practices of states cannot be undertaken without identifying the stable and foundational relationship between immigration, exclusion from citizenship and selective attribution of rights that constitutes an essential components of border maintenance (Guild and Groenendijk 2016). Despite the comprehensiveness and coordination of public responses concerning the inclusion of exiled populations within the curated framework of international law, the phenomenon of statelessness effects certain groups much more directly at a global scale (Vieks and van Waas 2022). In other words, it is never random but often results from premeditated and politically endorsed action and social policy. This problematique poses a distinct set of definitional problems in need of reflection and reconsideration, first and foremost in the language of limits of legalized belonging. For instance, following the events of the Arab Spring, the security agenda of the states in Europe have been transformed and redefined with unique outcomes concerning the protection of specific categories of the dispossessed populations of the MENA region. Concomitantly, the 4