306 VAN WAAS ET AL. statelessness and trafficking expertise within a single project, a third component was introduced: Subjective Legal Empowerment theory. The theory of Subjective Legal Empowerment (hereinafter, SLE) suggests that a person’s self-belief in his or her ability to resolve a dispute or conflict is a good measure of the actual ability of that person to resolve the situation.7 On the contrary, perceived lack of power is a substantial barrier to solving the existing problems. The advantage of this theory as a methodological framework is that it allows for the (relative) quantification of an individual or ­population’s legal empowerment such that it can be compared both between groups and across different scenarios or spheres of life. In other words, while controlling against other factors such as gender or socio-economic status, it becomes possible to measure whether a stateless person is more or less empowered than a national from the same community to solve a situation that could be qualified as a (legal) dispute.8 Furthermore, such comparative measurements can be taken with regard to particular legal problems that are relevant to the question of whether a person is at heightened risk of trafficking. Thus, for example, the relative SLE with regard to the ability to deal with exploitative labour conditions can be established for the stateless members of a community and their neighbours who hold nationality. This enables the testing of the overall hypothesis of this research, namely that a stateless person is more likely to become a victim of trafficking in persons than a person with citizenship. Exactly how this theoretical framing was translated into a concrete and workable methodology is set out next. 2.1 Step One: Research Design While sources point to statelessness placing especially women in a situation of extreme vulnerability,9 there is little data available on what and how significant the role of statelessness is in creating increased vulnerability. The current research will contribute to closing this knowledge gap by developing, implementing and documenting a research methodology 7 SLE is grounded in the psychological theory of ‘self-efficacy’: if you believe you can do something, you are more likely to put in the time and effort necessary and to indeed be successful. M. Gramatikov, R.B. Porter, ‘Yes, I Can: Subjective Legal Empowerment’ (2011) 18 Georgetown Journal on Law & Policy 169. 8 Note that this could refer to a wide range of situations, from domestic abuse, to violations of labour rights to dealing with debt. 9 For instance, UN Secretary-General, Guidance Note of the Secretary General: The United Nations and Statelessness (2011) <http://www.refworld.org/docid/4e11d5092.html> accessed 20 October 2013; UN Human Rights Council, Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality: Report of the Secretary General (2011) A/HRC/19/43. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 303-312