ness emerging. Two examples are the so-called “Windrush generation” in the UK and
some Syrian refugee children born in Europe.
The “Windrush affair” showed that some marginalized and even racialized minorities can be stripped of citizenship even if “according to the law” citizenship should be
granted to them. The Windrush generations refer to migrants from the Caribbean who
migrated to the UK between 1948 and 1971 as British subjects and who were granted
leave to remain (Tonkiss 2018). After WWII, the British government invited people from
its colonies to come to the UK since it lacked an adequate labour force. Due to different
factors, many of them never regularized their citizenship status in the UK, although they
had a right to do so (Sigona 2018). The leave to remain gave them a wide variety of
rights from the right to reside to the right to work as well as access to education. However, in 2010 the Home Office decided to destroy the landing cards, which were the only
solid proof that they had been granted the leave to remain. Thus, from legal citizens
they were put into a category of ‘illegal immigrants’. This particularly affected their children, who could only prove citizenship on the basis of their parents’ passport and hence
were at risk of becoming stateless (Valdez-Symonds and Valdez-Symonds 2018).
“Both the Windrush generation in the UK, as well as Syrian refugee children across Europe, belong to marginalized minorities.
They are particularly vulnerable to statelessness because of discrimination, war, conflict, and the legacy of colonization, but
also in many cases because of cultural racism”
Another conundrum connected to minority statelessness is the predicament that some
Syrian refugee children born in Europe face. Syrian nationality law is still based on gender discrimination. This means that Syrian children born outside the territory of Syria
can only inherit their citizenship from their Syrian Arab fathers. They cannot acquire citizenship if their father is unknown (for example, if he was killed in conflict). While gender
discrimination in nationality law has been widely discussed (Maktabi 2010, Lim 2018),
less attention has been paid to the right to a nationality of children who are not of Arab
origin, like, for example, the Kurds. The exclusionary provisions of Syrian Nationality
Law privileging Arabs have in the past rendered around 300,000 Kurds stateless. Ironically, the number of stateless Kurds has decreased in Syria, but not necessarily because of better implementation of mechanisms against statelessness. It is because the
stateless population has been displaced from Syria (Institute for Statelessness and Inclusion 2016).
Both the Windrush generation in the UK as well as Syrian refugee children
across Europe belong to marginalized minorities. They are particularly vulnerable to
statelessness because of discrimination, war, conflict, and the legacy of colonization,
but also in many cases because of cultural racism. Racism is not only symptomatic athttp://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home
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