Migration is typically a family strategy—for survival, protection, unity—and migration decisions will affect every member.  To acquire basic rights elsewhere, stateless families are often forced to separate.

Gender discrimination in national laws is rampant, rendering many women stateless and extremely vulnerable, and the children of those women may face a similar dilemma, because, in the majority of instances in this world, citizenship is conferred through the nationality of the father.

Most of the 13-14 million stateless in this world continue to live in their country of birth; that is, most stateless are not migrants.  However, the link between the two is undeniably strong: statelessness is indeed a root cause of refugee movements and migratory movements.  The very act of migration puts the stateless into an even more perilous realm. Four examples?

1. The trafficked and smuggled.
2. Refugees
3. Children of irregular migrants
4. "The brides": the women who move countries to marry someone of another nationality

There really is but one durable solution, one means of empowerment: acquiring a nationality.

But, as the saying goes, let's not allow perfect to be the enemy of the good.  In other words, let's also consider some less-than-perfect, less-than-durable interim solutions; for example, we can explore the so-called "complementary form of protection" whereby the stateless would have access to "tolerated stays" or "humanitarian resident permits".

Such options would afford the stateless migrants at least a degree of stability and human security until they are able to acquire an effective nationality.  In short, these alternatives would take tham out of the most perilous zone.

To read the presentation in its entirety, please see the pdf file below.

A perilous realm: The stateless-migrant nexus (408.37 KB)