Voluntary Statelessness: Reflections on Implications for International Relations and Political Theory Jocelyn Kane1, Director, Canadian Centre on Statelessness Introduction Statelessness has been described as a life of destitution, exploitation, and limbo (Asylum Aid 2017). Being stateless means that one generally does not possess identity documents or the capacity to obtain them. Because of this, stateless persons are ineligible to leave their country or enter another, unable to access health care or education, have difficulties in obtaining legal and legitimate employment, are often forced to live in sub-standard housing, and are often subject to lengthy detention and deportation orders that typically cannot be enforced (UNHCR 2017). However, it is because nationality2 is required in order to access political and judicial processes and even basic human rights that statelessness is of such consequence. Yet there are individuals and groups who choose to be stateless, to live “off the grid,” content with the inability to access the rights associated with citizenship. We do not know how many of these people exist, nor do we have an idea about how to “deal” with them, whether in the immediate term in the contexts of public policy and international law, or more fundamentally in terms of membership and belonging in today’s state-sovereign world. Below I present a brief overview of voluntary statelessness, demonstrating the diversity in individual and group cases. This is followed by reflections on possible implications on four key concepts in international relations and political theory: sovereignty, global governance, obligation, and membership. I conclude with considerations on areas of further research. Voluntary Statelessness Despite bountiful experiences of the belonging and inclusion of non-residents at the sub-state level (Blitz and Lynch 2011, Landolt and Goldring 2015, Ní Mhurchú 2015), membership is still governed by national law. How individuals and states interact is for the most part straightforward; they adhere to the rights and responsibilities prescribed within set geographical boundaries. Modernised in liberal political theory this “social contract” is the prerogative of the state to define, meaning that obligations between indi- 1 With thanks to Patti Tamara Lenard, University of Ottawa, and Fiorella Rabafuetti, University of Ottawa for feedback on this idea. 2 In this paper I use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, though I acknowledge the diversity in meanings for each concept, and the theoretical and practical implications of such. http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home 44