either citizenship or lack thereof (a problem Lawrance pursues in detail in chapter 3 of this volume). Attempts to define de facto statelessness have not solved the problem. For instance, one definition includes persons “outside the country of their nationality who are denied diplomatic protection or assistance by that country” (Blitz and Lynch 2009, 5). Another references those who are unable to document or prove nationality, and those whom a government does not recognize as citizens despite a colorable claim to that status (Southwick and Lynch 2009). The Expert Meeting on the Concept of Stateless Persons (2010) at Prato, Italy, proposed that an individual is stateless “if all states to which he or she has a factual link fail to consider the person as a national” (Bingham, Reddy, and Köhn 2011). Unlike de jure statelessness, no formal process determines whether an individual is “de facto” stateless. Rather, it is an ad hoc classification applicable when either an individual is unable to prove his citizenship, or when his country of origin refuses to recognize his citizenship. The definitions of stateless persons in the two international conventions have been widely recognized as deficient in recognizing the full scope of the problem for those affected (Van Waas 2008, 19–27). From the perspective of a person who cannot prove citizenship, de jure statelessness and de facto statelessness are one and the same. This chapter shows how this produces a possible “statelessness in waiting,” or, as noted in the introduction, a “statelessness in question” that bears many of the hallmarks of “citizenship in question.” Many of the contributing factors leading to a formal determination of statelessness emerge from a precarious existence, including the inability of vulnerable populations to register births and problems in acquiring documents (Fullerton 2014, 148; 5 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3150558