The Statelessness & Citizenship Review

Front Matter

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We Direct This Appeal to the Conscience of the World and We Plead in the Name of Justice

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On 11 June 1945, the Verbond Van Statenloze Slachtoffers Van Het Fascisme — or the Union of Stateless Victims of Fascism (‘Union’) — was launched in Amsterdam with a meeting and manifesto. This article provides for the first time an in-depth examination of the Union’s Manifesto, as well as its leaders, aims, and activities. It explores their work which was aimed at navigating the effects of statelessness and furthering the project of attaining rights for stateless people, including their right to reject citizenship and a designation as ‘enemy aliens’. Through their writings, we come to learn how the Union were effective and assertive political communicators, writing from knowledge, experience and expertise. Recovering the history of this organisation, this article offers an important opportunity to gain insight into the political and social histories within which organisations led by and for stateless people have acted, and continue to act.

Existential Refugees

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This article addresses the urgent need to reconceptualise refugeehood in contexts where existing legal categories fail to account for lived realities of displacement. It examines the Malayaga Tamils in India — descendants of indentured plantation labourers displaced during the colonial period — who continue to live in refugee camps despite their historical and ancestral ties to India. Their case highlights the inadequacy of conventional definitions of ‘refugee’ and ‘stateless person’, particularly in protracted situations of displacement and contested citizenship. Using an insider ethnographic approach, this study introduces the concept of the ‘existential refugee’ to describe the condition of communities caught in legal ambiguity, historical displacement and ontological insecurity. Fieldwork was conducted with 26 respondents (19 women and seven men), whose narratives reveal how everyday experiences of abandonment, estrangement and unbelonging shape their understanding of identity and belonging. By foregrounding the concept of the existential refugee, this article contributes both conceptually and empirically to debates on refugeehood, statelessness and citizenship. It invites policymakers, scholars and practitioners to rethink refugee protection frameworks by paying attention not only to legal recognition but also to the existential dimensions of belonging that define displaced lives.

A Discipline of Wonder

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This is an edited version of a keynote speech I gave to the 2025 Statelessness and Citizenship Doctoral Workshop hosted by the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at Melbourne Law School. The prompt was to speak about the importance of interdisciplinarity for our research. In this piece, I take that in its broadest sense. That means that this commentary is less about the specific debates, nuances and critiques of statelessness and citizenship studies, and more about the myriad strands that flow from and through our lives that make us the (inevitably interdisciplinary) scholars that we are. While the world continues to be filled with endless suffering, this talk points our attention towards an equally boundless discipline of wonder that I believe can act as a wellspring for a revolutionary life.

CJEU Ruling on Maltese Nationality

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Determining Statelessness of a Deportee in the UK

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Risk of Statelessness — The Retention of Austrian Citizenship Despite Voluntary Participation in Combat

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Citizenship in Decline? Immigration, Citizenship and Insecurity

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The Nationality and Statelessness of Nomadic Peoples Under International Law by Heather Jean Alexander (Oxford University Press 2025) 224 Pages. Price £81.00. ISBN 9780197772331

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