1 STATELESSNESS IN A WORLD OF NATION-STATES1

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to a nationality. ” (Article 15)2, yet despite this, the global community still includes an estimated eleven million stateless people.3 Without citizenship, stateless people usually lead lives of uncertainty, unable to claim protection of their rights from any state, and unable to participate meaningfully in any nation’s politics. Statelessness is widely agreed to be an undesirable, precarious and even dangerous condition. Despite the magnitude of this ‘problem’, statelessness is rarely addressed in public discourse or theory. This paper attempts to draw into question our understanding of statelessness, and its corollary: citizenship. The paper begins by outlining the popular conception of statelessness. It goes on to suggest that our capacity to understand the condition is limited by our belief that citizenship in a nation-state is natural and normal. The paper concludes with some variations of citizenship which do not fit neatly into conventional understandings of statelessness, but which nonetheless warrant our attention. 1 This paper was presented to the 17 t