A Typology of Statelessness stateless people do not benefit from the improvements here either. Whether it is investment rights, property rights or diplomatic protection, individuals can only invoke the corresponding rights if their country of nationality allows them to do so. Despite all the improvements that have occurred since 1945, stateless people remain as less than objects in international law as they lack a country of nationality. How does this ongoing discourse on individuals’ positions in international law help us to understand what protection one receives from the possession of nationality? At first, it must be acknowledged that under international law nationality does not in itself guarantee any protection. Rather, it determines who is responsible for granting such protection.43 Hence, statelessness can be best understood as the lack of responsibility. On the one hand, de jure stateless individuals have no country that is responsible for their protection from other countries. They are less than objects of international law. In fact, the de jure stateless have no position in international law at all. On the other hand, de facto stateless individuals have a country that is responsible for their protection from other countries but it is not willing or capable to provide this protection. They are objects of international law, yet not treated as such. Through the concept of responsibility, it becomes much clearer that statelessness is a central issue in international politics. This is to say that the possession of nationality and thereby, a position in international law is, at best, a safeguard against violence inflicted by countries other than one’s own. It does not guarantee this protection, nor does it offer any protection from violence inflicted by the country of nationality itself. Nationality, first and foremost, indicates who is responsible and blameworthy if no protection is provided. B Legal and Social Recognition The concept of responsibility helps us to understand what it means to be stateless. But how does it come about? In A Study on Statelessness, the UN identifies five causes of statelessness. They include: (1) gaps in and conflicts of national legislation, (2) state succession, (3) denationalisation, (4) persecution and (5) mass emigration caused by the transformation of the political and social system of the country of origin.44 The first three causes result in de jure statelessness at birth or later in life, whereas the last two causes lead to de facto statelessness if the affected individual is not also denationalised. One may ask if there is any common ground between them. I think there is: they are arguably connected through the concept of recognition. Recognition has at least two elements: one legal and the other social.45 Legal recognition and social recognition are tightly connected as individuals’ legal recognition often depends on whether they are socially recognised.46 I define legal recognition as having a position in law and social recognition more broadly as being seen as a moral equal that deserves to be treated with dignity. 43 44 45 46 See Matthew J Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees (Cambridge University Press 2004) 211. United Nations Study on Statelessness (n 6) pt 2 s I ch 1. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (MIT Press 1995) 94. ibid 110–11. 243