2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) have argued that the international order itself depends on citizenship. 148 If statelessness is indeed a product of slippery statecraft, then I suggest it cannot be resolved unless advocates and scholars stop ‘seeing like a state’ 149 and start seeing the state in statelessness. So what is at stake for global governance? Does this make the issue of statelessness intractable? What becomes increasingly clear are the limits of the nation-state framework to deliver justice. As Nancy Fraser points out, the Westphalian view is that justice applies within the territory of a nation-state to citizen subjects, which frames first-order questions of justice unjustly. 150 The sovereign state draws the frame as it will, inevitably but arguably avoidably, casting unwanted ‘others’ outside the frame. Boundaries of inclusion/exclusion are worrisome matters from a perspective of justice and human rights for any number of groups that have been othered. When a collective finds itself outside of all state boundaries, yet still needing to reside somewhere on the planet, their very existence challenges the international system of nation-states and its carving up of international space. Our earlier analysis of the causes of statelessness reveals how multiple forms of social exclusion converge to produce the ultimate exclusion: the person who, politically, does not belong anywhere on earth. This suggests a different frame from which to consider justice for the stateless: belonging. UNHCR alludes to this in its campaign title, ‘#IBELONG’ yet proposed solutions are circumscribed by statist assumptions. 151 One of the primary injustices facing the stateless, Matthew Gibney aptly points out, 152 is not that they cannot find a state to call home, but rather that the state to which they arguably belong and which should recognise them as citizens refuses to do so. On the other hand, some stateless groups, such as Palestinians, may feel they already belong to a national group; in their case, maintaining a stateless status may form part of an ongoing political claim for statehood notwithstanding their exclusion from the Refugee Convention and UNHCR mandate for protection of refugees and the stateless. 153 To move beyond such an impasse, political theorist Kristy Belton argues for the ‘right to belong’ using a framework of global distributive justice in which citizenship is seen as a good subject to fair distribution. 154 Belton’s proposal of just membership for stateless people moves beyond statist practices of inclusion and exclusion by granting agency to stateless individuals to determine where it is they wish to belong. 155 Such a proposition would imply the creation and recognition of new and more specific rights than the right to a nationality, such as 148 Barry Hindess, ‘Citizenship and Empire’ in Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (eds), 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton University Press 2005) 241, 256. James C Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press 1999). Fraser (n 14) 294. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘#IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness’ <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong-campaign-to-end-statelessness.html>. Matthew Gibney, ‘Statelessness and the Right to Citizenship’ (2009) 32 Forced Migration Review 50–51. Maissaa Almustafa, ‘Relieved Vulnerabilities of Palestinian Refugees: Governing Through Exclusion’ (2017) 27(4) Social and Legal Studies 164. Belton (n 13) 165. ibid 175. 154