Better Must Come differently, belonging may be realised in one’s immediate family and community, school or religious community, and gender or age group, but when scaled up to more impersonal spaces and places this same sense of belonging is not necessarily reproduced, particularly for those who have been constructed to be members of an other ethnic collectivity and long considered not to belong to the nation-state community, 136 such as the Up-Country Tamil population. For interviewees who expressed that they had no place in the spaces beyond the estate, and for those who otherwise opt not to involve themselves in matters outside the estate, it may very well be that a legacy of isolation and discrimination has produced a common sense understanding of the plantation as the place where one belongs, or conversely, that such belonging is presumed not to be found outside the estate. This absent sense of belonging is again underpinned by the 44 survey respondents and 19 interviewees who do not perceive equality with the majority population to have been achieved. As previously discussed, it may very well be that feeling equal does not capture the affective properties of belonging that lay beyond rights entitlements, and by extension, that equality and belonging are not wholly equivalent. However, by determining that some among this population do not feel as though they are equals of the majority population, and based on an understanding of belonging as informed by the UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign, it can be said that the acquisition of citizenship has not provided some previously stateless persons with the belonging it is assumed to provide. 3 De Facto Citizenship Based on the evidence gathered from what is a rather small sample size, and although it is only a minority who harbour a sense of not belonging, 137 the majority of all those consulted in this study deem the acquisition of citizenship as nonbeneficial and in so doing underscore that the legal conferment of citizenship should not be taken as a panacea for the many encumbrances that befall the stateless. It is true that the acquisition of a legal identity before the state, and thus all states, is invaluable when considering the many and varied degradations that statelessness can invite, but the act of conferment and the provision of rights and entitlements are not one in the same. Unfortunately, the literature on how previously stateless groups view the acquisition of citizenship has yet to be fully developed, and it is only the situation of the previously stateless Urdu-speakers of Bangladesh that this study may be compared with as many in this community ascribe little value to citizenship given that there too, a legacy of discrimination and marginalisation largely operates to prevent this community from securing the 136 Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’ (2007) 10(4) Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 561. 137 Four of 30 interviewees revealed that they do not interact with the world beyond the estate, suggesting that one’s respective plantation is the place where one belongs. With respect to healthcare, two interviewees quoted above were unable to speak of their experience using the healthcare system because they had never attempted to use these services. Kumuthuvalli claimed that for the poor nothing will change, hence there is no sense in seeking medical assistance other than what is available in the estate, whereas Anandan declared that he and his family stay within the estate because they know not of the world beyond the estate. Added to this are the two interviewees who could not comment on whether the Up-Country Tamil population had achieved equality with the majority population given that they had no experience of life beyond their estates to reflect on. 31