Global Governance International and domestic advocacy efforts against statelessness are deeply rooted in the long-standing principle that everyone has the right to a nationality. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has provided a foundation for states and advocates alike to resolve situations of statelessness (UN General Assembly 1948), and the right to a nationality has been incorporated in no less than seventeen international human rights instruments (CCS 2018). The right to a nationality, like the principle of sovereignty, is the status quo when it comes to, at the very least, individual-state relations and, notwithstanding gaps in the Declaration with respect to accessing nationality, it seems it is non-negotiable. This raises an interesting question regarding the apparent rift between international law, which is designed to protect from the thorns of statelessness, and philosophical ideas of free will. If a consequence of sovereignty is the right to a nationality, would individual sovereignty not demand the right to non-nationality? What can the experiences of the voluntarily stateless tell us of the claim to statelessness? If we have a legitimate right to a nationality, what is preventing us from having a right to non-nationality? What would the right to non-nationality look like in practice? Could it be governed by international institutions and states given that all individuals live in some state, regardless of their desire to belong to none of them? How would rights be distributed and accessed given one’s non-membership? There are “If we have a legitimate plenty of contemporary examples that can speak to right to a nationality, this, namely the “stateless person status,” sanctuary city policies, and residency based rights. These what is preventing us rights, however, are granted under the assumption from having a right to that full or partial membership is sought, certainly non-nationality?” not rejected. Obligation Individual-state relations are governed by the ubiquitous social contract, wherein the individual obeys the laws of the land in exchange for state protection. In some way this includes all non-citizen residents. Undocumented and stateless persons, however, present a challenge to this relationship as, with some exceptions, they have not been granted permission to reside in the state. As non-status stateless persons do not enjoy at times even basic state protections, including access to legal assistance and freedom from arbitrary detention (ENS 2017), their experience highlights the disconnect between a state’s duty to protect and the stateless person’s inability to fully obey. In this light, in what ways are the voluntarily stateless obliged to their host states? We can look at this in at least two ways. If a voluntarily stateless person has status, but not full membership in their host country, is there a line to be drawn relating to their obhttp://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home 49