Finally, issues arise in respect of how a nationality category is allocated to an individual
case file on CID. After investigation it appears that case owners and data analysts do not
have a consistent approach to this issue.67 This means that these categorisations may be
used arbitrarily or inconsistently. This could result in a stateless person’s application being
assigned, in error, to a nationality associated with their country of former habitual residence.
Such errors in categorisation could contribute to a significant undercount of the numbers of
stateless persons in the published statistics.
The problems with the identification and categorisation of stateless persons indicate that
caution has to be displayed in analysing the relevant data from the Home Office’s published
immigration control statistics. Despite these challenges, an analysis of the relevant published
datasets was attempted to identify trends in the numbers and profiles of stateless persons
identified.
67
See section 4.6 in Chapter 4.
in the United Kingdom
33