ABSTRACT
While statelessness is generally treated as an issue of whether a person formally belongs to a State or not through the legal bond of citizenship (UN 1954 ), these interviewees’ quotes reveal the important role that identity plays in citizenship construction and the uncertainty that surrounds belonging when one is a noncitizen everywhere. Unlike asylum seekers, refugees, migrants , and other types of noncitizens who are noncitizens in their States of residence, but who are generally recognized as citizens under the operation of some State’s laws, the majority of stateless people are ‘noncitizen insiders’ (Belton 2011 ). Th ey have not migrated from elsewhere and remain, for the most part, in the countries where they were born.
