ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to problematise this interchangeability of nationality and citizenship in academic and legal treatments of statelessness. It argues that discussions of statelessness which draw on the language of nationality serve, through the reification of national group membership, to legitimise the very structures which drive and permit the exclusion of stateless persons. The chapter conceptualises and sought to problematise the implicit legitimisation of the performance of citizenship-as-nationality in the field of statelessness, within both international law and academic writing on the subject. It argues further that those working in the field of statelessness should do so from within a post-national framework which offers a basis for 'troubling' the exclusions permitted by nationality. Indeed, the Director of International Protection at UNHCR has described how, over and above citizenship, it is 'the formal legal bond of nationality' which is the key focus of work in the field of statelessness.