2025 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 7(2) apparently not vulnerable enough to qualify for asylum. Simultaneously, their legal citizenship status prevented them from being recognised as technically stateless.88 Brazilian authorities argued that displaced Haitians were not eligible for refugee status as they could not demonstrate a threat ‘to their lives, security or freedom’.89 Further, nations such as Mexico, France and the US made definitive efforts to mitigate the flow of migrants through efforts such as blockades, border closures and quotas.90 In each instance, foreign states had absolute authority to curtail access to their states and the rights this entails for Haitians seeking security and a new home. In an ironic turn, their status as the de facto stateless resulting from the earthquake further served to exclude them from any meaningful security or protections. Globally, the ambiguity imposed by possessing legal nationality but lacking functioning citizenship, as was the Haitian experience post-earthquake, imposes further deficiencies in the treatment of the de facto stateless. As I describe in this section, the living and public circumstances in Haiti post-earthquake became untenable with the fulfilment of functioning citizenship. Yet, the international community utilised the categorisations of stateless, citizen and refugee to prevent Haitian migration into their own states. Internally, the earthquake devastated government, work and communal infrastructure,91 which in turn undermined Haitians’ access to truly functioning citizenship. The ‘fragility of the Haitian state’ left the government unable to meet citizens’ basic needs for subsistence.92 Government services such as housing and infrastructure, welfare and general ordinances were no longer accessible to those in need.93 Yet, the disaster’s negative impact on communities suggests a situation of de facto statelessness. While there was an initial, massive influx of humanitarian aid in the country, those affected by the earthquake did not achieve a sense of state support and belonging pivotal to our sense of true, functioning citizenship, under Kingston’s terminology. To further illustrate, authors often compare the impact of the 2010 Haitian earthquake with the 2011 Japanese tsunami. While both disasters were environmentally devastating, Japan’s coordinated government response, relatively better infrastructure and access to resources allowed them to avoid the ‘civil unrest and looting’ that followed the Haitian disaster.94 Per Fatton, the 2010 earthquake ‘brought into sharp focus Haiti’s desperate social and economic conditions’.95 This revealed the hollow structures of governance and the fragility of formal citizenship already present in the nation, while subsequently exacerbating these problems to the point of exposing de facto statelessness manifest within Haiti. The earthquake exacerbated Haiti’s crisis of infrastructure faults. Generally, governments do not oversee housing in Haiti, not even with the level of permits, 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 Carol A Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status’ (1998) 10(1–2) International Journal of Refugee Law 156, 172–4. Thomaz (n 84) 35. ibid; Sanjula Weerasinghe, ‘Overview of UNHCR Study, “In Harm’s Way: International Protection in the Context of Nexus Dynamics between Conflict or Violence and Disaster or Climate Change”’ (2019) 31(1) International Journal of Refugee Law 149, 152. Thomaz (n 84) 35. ibid. Dupuy, ‘Beyond the Earthquake’ (n 7) 196. ‘Contrasting Levels of Resilience: The Cases of Haiti and Japan’, Vision of Humanity (Web Page, 6 October 2021) <https://www.visionofhumanity.org/contrasting-levels-of-resiliencethe-cases-of-haiti-and-japan/>, archived at <perma.cc/9BBD-L35B>. Fatton (n 7) 227. 140