2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) mechanism and system through which refugees are made 15 and statelessness constructed. 16 The increased focus on deportability 17 is a form of ‘slow violence’ 18 and implicates a constant threat of being forcibly evicted. 19 Even if a person is granted a temporary residence permit, deportation may linger in the future; this is especially so for people who cannot be ‘removed’ due to what are known as ‘practical impediments’ to removal. As migration regimes and their institutions rest on the assumption that migrants have a home country and are members of some nation-state, 20 stateless migrants represent an anomaly. They are, per definition, persons without nationality or citizenship in any country. 21 When claims for asylum or other forms of protection are declined, and return to the country of origin is supposed to occur, a position of ‘deportation techniques’ 22 and impossibility often emerges as stateless people with pending deportation decisions are not allowed to stay, but are also unable to ‘return’ to anywhere. They are caught, or stranded, in a limbo situation 23 of neither-nor, as there is frequently no nation-state to which they can return. They are to be deported, but eviction cannot be executed. They are not allowed to stay but are forced to do so as it is not possible to return anywhere. Previous research has shown how this limbo-situation is experienced as a form of bureaucratic violence, 24 but in the literature on migrant resistance, there is a lack of studies on the agency of stateless people. ‘Statelessness’ has often been assumed to be a particular form of precarity or destitution, 25 a position outside of citizenship, and lacking ‘the right to have rights’, as Hannah Arendt declared in her seminal text in the aftermath of World 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 See Matthew J Gibney, ‘Is Deportation a Form of Forced Migration?’ (2013) 32(2) Refugee Survey Quarterly 116; De Genova (n 3); Nell Gabiam, ‘Citizenship and Development: Palestinians in France and the Multiple Meanings of Statelessness’ (2015) 50(4) Studies in Comparative International Development 479, 496; Tendayi Bloom, Noncitizenism: Recognizing Noncitizen Capabilities in a World of Citizens (Routledge 2018); Martina Tazzioli, The Making of Migration (Sage 2020); Picozza (n 2). See Nicole Stokes-Dupass, ‘Mass Migration, Tightening Borders and Emerging Forms of Statelessness in Denmark, Norway and Sweden’ (2017) 12(1) Journal of Applied Security Research 40, 43–44. See Shahram Khosravi, ‘Sweden: Detention and Deportation of Asylum Seekers’ (2009) 50(4) Race & Class 38; De Genova (n 3); Leanne Weber, ‘Deciphering Deportation Practices across the Global North’ in Sharon Pickering et al (eds), The Routledge Handbook in Crime and International Migration (Routledge 2011) 155. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press 2014). Karina Horsti and Päivi Pirkkalainen, ‘The Slow Violence of Deportability’, Border Criminologies (Blog Post, 2021) <https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/74831> (‘The Slow Violence of Deportability’). See Phillip Cole, ‘Insider Theory and the Construction of Statelessness’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 255, 263. Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960) art 1 (‘1954 Convention’). Guilia Fabini, ‘Internal Bordering in the Context of Undeportability: Border Performances in Italy’ (2019) 23(2) Theoretical Criminology 175, 176; Melanie Griffiths, ‘Anonymous Aliens? Questions of Identification in the Detention and Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers’ (2012) 18(6) Population, Space and Place 715, 722. See Anna Lundberg, ‘Pushed out in Limbo — The Every-day Decision-Making about “Practical Impediments to Enforcement” in the Swedish Management of Return Migration’ (2020) 3(3) Retfærd 13. But see Khosravi (n 17); ‘The Slow Violence of Deportability’ (n 19). See Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Harvard University Press 1970). 270