38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 264 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 What I refer to as "circles of citizenship" resonates with what political and social theorists call "imagined communities." 129 Citizenship is membership to imagined communities that States create. One of the oldest civilizations, Rome, began as an "association" that was initially comprised of stateless peoples. 130 In Michael Ignatieff's contemporary classic, The Myth of Citizenship, citizenship is described as a "noble myth," a reminder that, from its conception, citizenship is an "exclusionary category" that justifies the coercive rule of the included over the excluded. 131 The anthropological perspective accepts that States "legibilize" populations when they imagine polities. Legibility is related to statecraft—the management of State affairs; statecraft's authority lies in the "distinct power to define citizenship membership in the social whole." 132 In his influential book, Seeing Like a State, anthropologist James Scott demonstrates the modern State's ability to "legibilize" populations and territories by simplifying and standardizing measurement and documentation according to its view. 133 If citizenship is a construct of the State, then so is statelessness. Noora A. Lori writes that because the world's outlier populations do not neatly align with State configurations, most States have populations that do not fit into their imagined communities—that is, the dominant national narratives of what the States look like. 134 Consequently, States have resorted to three options when responding to these populations: "incorporate, expel, or ignore." 135 When States ignore them, they become "invisible in the [S]tate's legal self-image." 136 The result is statelessness, as these populations are excluded from the States' circles of citizenship. Statelessness determination is one process through which States create and re-create imagined communities. At the moment of determination, the State decides whether an individual is a member of the imagined communities of States, thereby changing or maintaining the configuration of the circles. A configuration is changed if a person is excluded or included. Circles can have thick or thin 129. See, e.g., BENEDICT ANDERSON, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF NATIONALISM 6, 25 (1983). 130. JOY CONNOLLY, THE STATE OF SPEECH: RHETORIC AND POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME 87 (2007). 131. Michael Ignatieff, The Myth of Citizenship, in CITIZENSHIP: CRITICAL CONCEPTS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE 137, 140 (Richard Bellamy & Madeleine Kennedy-Macfoy eds., 2014). 132. See Janet Coleman, Citizenship and the Language of Statecraft, in FINDING EUROPE: DISCOURSES ON MARGINS, COMMUNITIES, IMAGES 223–53 (Anthony Molho, Diogo Ramado Curto & Niki Koniordos eds., 2007) (For an excellent exposition of how citizenship and its relationship to statecraft had been variously defined, spanning from the period of the Christian Roman imperial statecraft as experienced and described by St. Augustine to its much later realizations during the 17th and 18th centuries, and arguing that in some way, these conceptions continue to the present). 133. See generally JAMES SCOTT, SEEING LIKE A STATE: HOW CERTAIN SCHEMES TO IMPROVE THE HUMAN CONDITION HAVE FAILED (1998). 134. Noora A. Lori, Statelessness, 'In-Between' Statuses, and Precarious Citizenship, in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIZENSHIP 743, 748 (Ayelet Shachar et al. eds., 2017). 135. Id. 136. Id.