148 C. FAULKNER AND S. SCHIFFER essence of being stateless can help explain why repatriation efforts fail to bring lasting solutions – increasing the chances of a ‘refugee cycle’. While many refugees might prefer repatriation, for stateless refugees repatriation may be undesirable, particularly if their country of origin fails to meet its obligations (UNHCR, 2017, p. 28). For the Rohingya, this has been increasingly problematic. Further, refugee refoulement remains unique in the Rohingya case as their presence in Bangladesh represents a protracted refugee situation – where at least 25,000 refugees have been in exile for five years or more following their initial displacement (UNHCR, 2004). A similar situation arose in Bhutan when a restrictive citizenship law in 1985 saw the Lhotshampas, ethnic Nepalese residing in Bhutan as early as the nineteenth century, stripped of their citizenship. This was followed by the group’s exile to Nepal where they lived as refugees for roughly two decades before the US, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand agreed to participate as part of a third country resettlement option (Dhungana, 2010). Most examples of refoulement occur when host countries immediately deport asylum seekers or refuse to allow them into their country. For the Rohingya, decades of repression and violence have created a refugee cycle and, unlike the Lhotshampas, there has been no solution. As the above discussion suggests, refugees’ designation can play an important part in their treatment both during repatriation and after. The lack of citizenship rights can severely degrade important international protections for stateless refugees and their repatriation can aggravate volatile security issues for all parties. This leads us to our central hypothesis: the Rohingya’s status as stateless is a central contributor to the continual failures of repatriation. Design Rather than hypothesis testing, our analysis consists of plausibility probes used to assess the plausibility of the theoretical argument. In other words, our analysis aims to shed light on and refine our theoretical expectations (Levy, 2008). To do so, we adopted a qualitative strategy using historical materials and process tracing to explore the repatriation of the Rohingya in the early 1990s. We then use an illustrative example of successful repatriation in Angola to probe further the theoretical argument. Within each case vignette we address alternative explanations identified in the literature as relevant to the success/failure of repatriations, most notably, third-party involvement, host/origin accountability, and refugees’ agency in the process (i.e. voluntary or not). Our main dependent variable, the success/failure of repatriation, considers the sustainability of repatriation (i.e. longevity) and the degree of violence against repatriated groups. Our main independent variable is captured by examining refugee status as either stateless or not. Statelessness is generally defined as a condition in which a person ‘is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law’ (UNCHR, 2018b). Thus, stateless persons often lack the same civil, political, social, and economic rights as citizens, making them particularly vulnerable to abuse within their country of residence (Weissbrodt and Collins, 2006). The consequences of being stateless reach far beyond the borders of one’s home as a person’s vulnerability is intensified when he/she must flee in search of refuge. While protections exist for stateless persons, including the UN’s 10-year action plan to end statelessness (launched