CYELP 16 [2020] 301-317 301 STATELESSNESS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MIGRATION CRISIS IN EUROPE: A GROWING CHALLENGE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Agata Szwed * Abstract: Statelessness remains a secondary topic in the debate on the migration crisis that has been raging across Europe since 2015, but it will certainly come to the fore in the near future. This paper draws attention to the issue of limited social and scholarly interest in statelessness in the context of the present migration crisis. The research explores how Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan nationality laws (as the majority of protection seekers come from these countries) regulate the issue of acquiring citizenship and why this gives rise to the problem of statelessness. The paper concludes that the lack of interest in the issue of statelessness is a growing challenge for the international community and requires systemic action. A ‘stateless generation’ may never become part of any society, which may in turn give rise to social conflicts in the countries of current residence. The author concludes by putting forward some suggestions for solving this problem from global, regional, state and civil society perspectives. Keywords: statelessness, migration crisis, refugee crisis, asylum, international law. 1 Introduction The migration crisis − which started in 2015 and is still going on − caused by a massive influx of refugees and immigrants to Europe, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, has shown the weakness of existing legal regulations with regard to the status of refugees and migrants. It has also shown the frailty of the idea of supranational solidarity in the face of a problem of such magnitude as the recent influx of refugees from conflict areas. The situation is further complicated by the fact that not all of the arrivals in Europe since 2015 are able to or want to prove their national origin. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the fact that the refugee crisis has created an entire ‘stateless generation’ of children growing up in limbo. This remains a problem unresolved by international law and currently no significant attempts to deal with this urgent * Assistant at the Institute of Legal Studies, University of Szczecin. Lecturer in International Law, agata.szwed@usz.edu.pl. ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3836-3646. DOI: 10.3935/ cyelp.16.2020.373.