Chapter 1. Introduction people can be found more steadily from the 16th century onwards in parishes keeping track of members. Indeed, “the success of civil registration in Europe” has been held to be “the outcome of a long history of recording events in parish registers”.86 These registers could include information on affi liation to particular denominations, marriages, births and deaths. Legal instruments and states today often operate from a presumption that these systems of registration and identification – more advanced than the abovementioned parish registers of course – exist and in practice, (stateless) individuals are confronted with their importance. To start with, the dominant principles in attributing nationality already demand that the parents or place of birth is known (and officially recorded) in order for a newborn to be considered as a national. And in practice, we see that registration and identification present difficulties for stateless people. In the Netherlands, for instance, the main avenue for recognition as a stateless person is – as it stands January 2022 – to be registered in the Dutch Basic Registration of Persons (Basisregistratie Personen, BRP) by the municipal authorities as such. In order to be registered as stateless, a person should, however, be able to identify as being stateless using official legal documentation certifying that (s)he is stateless. This has proven to be very hard, which has likely led to stateless people – including children – being registered as of ‘unknown nationality’ – a practice common in more European states.87 Furthermore, it has proven to be near impossible to change a designation in the BRP as of ‘unknown nationality’ to ‘stateless’.88 As such, the importance of being recorded properly in the official registration system is even bigger, as is – in turn – having proper documentation to that end to ‘prove’ your (lack of any) nationality. At the same time, registration of the (lack of any) nationality of an individual is important to (practically) ‘implementing’ nationality matters at a national level: “states create and interrogate individual’s evidence of citizenship”89, which is often particularly important when potential benefits of nationality (or of being recognized as stateless) are at stake. Here, think for instance about the possibility of a national to participate in public life and democratic processes. As such, the registration and administration of people as belonging to a certain state or not is often considered an important part of our understanding of nationality today. This might also be a reason for the inclusion 86 87 88 89 publications/pdf/technical/TP2018–1.pdf> accessed 22 August 2021, who mentions that “[t]here may have been attempts at registration of births and deaths in Antiquity, but these have left no traces in the statistical record”. Etienne van de Walle, ‘Historial Development of Civil Registration Systems: A European Perspective’ (2018) UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Technical Paper No. 2018/1, 2 <https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/technical/ TP2018–1.pdf> accessed 22 August 2021. ENS, ‘No Child Should Be Stateless’ (ENS 2015) <https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www. statelessness.eu/fi les/ENS_NoChildStateless_final.pdf> accessed 22 August 2021. Karel Hendriks, Jelle Klaas & Marlotte van Dael, ‘Juridische spoken verdwijnen nog niet’ [Legal ghosts are not disappearing yet] (2017) 2 Asiel & Migrantenrecht 75, 77. Benjamin N Lawrance & Jacqueline Stevens (eds), Citizenship in Question. Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Duke University Press 2017) 2. Intersentia 23