Introducing ‘unwanted’ noncitizens 53 humanitarian exception, some people are seen to be legitimately excluded from any relationship with the State with most power over them. This is despite a strongly activated individual-State relationship. Irrespective of the validity of such individuals’ humanitarian claims, the argument here is that they in fact have relationships with the State in question. A citizenist discourse makes it possible to ignore, and indeed quite difficult to characterise, these relationships. In addition, the assumed citizenism risks legitimising or obscuring other, for example ethnically based, reasons for exclusion. A recognition of (unhyphenated) noncitizenship helps the interrogation of these exclusions. There is no internationally recognised definition of asylum seeker.47 In the UK: ‘claim for asylum’ means a claim made by a person […] that it would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under the [1951 Refugee] Convention for him to be removed from, or required to leave, the United Kingdom.48 An asylum seeker according to this definition is someone who has made such a claim. After examination, if the claim is considered unfounded, or insufficient for that person to be recognised as a refugee or to be eligible for some other quasi-citizen humanitarian status, then it is rejected. In many cases, this leaves people with no individual-State relationship on which to call and so no State in place to protect their rights. Such individuals are, then, irregular immigrants. Some commentators have suggested that this puts people into a situation that looks like statelessness.49 There are no reliable data on how many refused asylum seekers are in the UK, but one 2009 LSE study put the number at between 417,000 and 863,000, and given people continue to arrive and continue to be refused asylum, while few are deported, the number may well be much higher.50 Once someone has been refused asylum in the UK s/he has a window in which to appeal or to leave. After that period, the person, still forbidden from working, for the most part becomes ineligible for cash benefits, housing and 47 For example, see David Weissbrodt (2008) The Human Rights of Non-Citizens, Oxford University Press, p. 111; Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam (2007) The Refugee in International Law 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, section entitled ‘The Concept of Asylum’. 48 (1993 Act (1)). 49 Brad Blitz and Miguel Otero-Iglesias (2011) ‘Stateless by Any Other Name: Refused AsylumSeekers in the United Kingdom’, pp. 1–17 in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(4). 50 Jennifer Allsopp et al (2014) Poverty among refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, IRiS Working Paper Series, No. 1/2014, University of Birmingham, p. 10; Nando Sigona and Vanessa Hughes (2012) No Way Out, No Way In, Research Report, May 2012, ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Security, Hollywell Press, Oxford, p. 7; Ian Gordon, Kathleen Scanlon, Tony Travers and Christine Whitehead (2009) Economic impact on the London and UK economy of an earned regularisation of irregular migrants to the UK, LSE report for the Greater London Authority, London.