12 Refugee Law Initiative Working Paper 76 appropriate to expand upon targeted areas of interest. 3.2 Interview Data Collection Six experts participated in this research anonymously through unstructured interviews. Interviewees were selected based upon their legal experience with child rights protection and/or statelessness, and included judges, attorneys, and scholars. Interviews with these practitioners were conducted via online video conference platforms. The interviews were each approximately 30 minutes in length and the data gathered from these attorneys were rooted in European jurisdictions, although other jurisdictions were examined or discussed if relevant. The direction of the interview was based upon the specific expertise of the interviewee but centered around questions related to litigant choice, a child’s right to be heard, the involvement of third parties, the use of special representatives, and relevant international and domestic law in the EU. 3.3 Ethical Concerns and Limitations With respect to expert interviews, due to the sensitive nature of statelessness and children involved in litigation, it was important to acknowledge that questions may trigger unpleasant memories of past cases or clients for the experts. Any particular line of questioning or the interview itself would have been halted immediately at any sign of distress or discomfort; fortunately, no interviews needed to be abandoned. All participation was anonymous, and interviewees are named only by general job title and interview date. No questions regarding specific cases or individuals were asked, although some experts volunteered specifics about their experiences. Any questions that would prompt participants to breach attorney-client privilege were forbidden. All recordings and notes have been stored confidentially in anonymized computer files under password protection. All participants confirmed their consent to these conditions set forth in writing prior to interviews. With respect to the legal research, this paper was not intended to be a universal sweep of all childhood statelessness cases in Europe. This research gratefully relied upon ENS’s curation of the SCLD and the ability to filter and review childhood statelessness cases in both English and non-English speaking jurisdictions. With respect to the latter, there were limitations with respect to this research’s reliance upon the translations and summaries found in the SCLD. Certain judgments from countries such as Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Serbia were published only in the country’s official language; however, the data points were not reliant upon nuance or complicated interpretation. The 44 cases selected encompassed a broad range of domestic and international courts, but there were several European jurisdictions not included in the study. This was not a conscious choice, but a result of the filter applied in the search over the cases within the SCLD database.