Rethinking Statelessness from Within

De Facto Statelessness And (Dys)Functional Citizenship in Haiti

Abstract

The concept of statelessness is typically framed as a legalistic issue caused by displacement or migration. This state-focussed lens serves to marginalise the experiences of the de facto stateless and those whose experiences fall outside the legalistic binary of citizen or de jure stateless. This article works to disrupt these tendencies by conceptualising the intra-national issues of ‘unbelonging’ and lack of political agency in Haiti as a phenomenon of de facto statelessness. In doing so, this article reframes the colonial ramifications of Western interventionism in Haiti and their exacerbation of the effects of the 2010 earthquake and loss of voting since 2016 as a crisis of de facto statelessness. Through engagement with the political theory of Hannah Arendt, leveraged alongside the writings of post-colonial Haitian authors, this article recentres the experiences of individuals in Haiti as deeply affected by political disenfranchisement and unbelonging.