The Statelessness & Citizenship Review

Front Matter

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:14:00 +1100

Erratum

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 11:31:17 +1100

Exploring Atypical Citizenship Deprivation and Spillover Effects in the Contested Taiwanese Citizenship

Jing-Han Chen — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Taiwan, an island nation with an ambiguous international status, has one of the most contested citizenship regimes in the world. This paper explores the perspectives of Taiwanese people on their precarious citizenship: a topic previously underexplored. The central argument posits that mis-recognition of Taiwanese citizenship by foreign authorities amounts to a denial of citizenship: a form of atypical citizenship deprivation that lacks human rights safeguards. Two recent European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) cases illustrate these points: Liu and Others v Norway, and Liu v Poland. In exploring these cases, this paper discusses the spillover effect of how issues of citizenship and sovereignty become crucial in international legal disputes, even when not explicitly related to the primary legal issues of the case in question. These reflections on liminal Taiwanese citizenship illuminate broader concerns of contested citizenship in the contemporary international community.

ACKNOWLEGEMENT

The author would like to express their special thanks to Prof. Jo Shaw and Dr Dawoon Jung for their valuable feedback on the draft of this paper, to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and thoughtful comments, and to Dr Kasey McCall Smith and Dr Elisenda Castanas Adam for their insights during the Global Justice Academy roundtable. This paper was finalised during their fellowship at the Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) in the summer of 2025, with gratitude for the support provided by the GTI.

Rethinking Statelessness from Within

Rebekah Prystupa — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 11:36:49 +1100

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.

Hierarchies of Statelessness in Germany

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:58:27 +1100

This article argues that the categorisation practice of ‘undetermined nationality’ produces a hierarchy of statelessness that results in the inadequate fulfilment of Germany’s international obligations to protect stateless people. This categorisation practice is maintained through the absence of a statelessness determination procedure, discriminatory legal frameworks and problematic discretionary administrative practices. The article draws on eight semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in March and April 2024 with people with lived experience of statelessness in Germany. It illustrates how different categories of statelessness affect individuals in their everyday self-realisation, career prospects, wellbeing and political participation. It offers testimonies from different generations of stateless individuals, evidencing how statelessness is not a static legal anomaly, but a dynamic, bureaucratically and legally manufactured spectrum of legal stratification and exclusion. These testimonies also show that if Germany does not implement a statelessness determination procedure it will continue to avoid its responsibilities, failing to comply with international obligations and contributing to human rights violations.

Italy’s 2024 Universal Criminalisation of Surrogacy

Michel Rouleau-Dick, Meiraf Tesfaye, Angelica Conti — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:00:32 +1100

Citizenship on Pause? The Ambiguities Surrounding Termination of Citizenship in India

Kalyani Ramnath — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:02:24 +1100

Faslliu And Rexha V Albania

Clara Van Thillo — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:05:53 +1100

Nagoya High Court, Decision, Reiwa 6 Nen (Ra), No 431 (11 September 2024)

Hajime Akiyama — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:07:32 +1100

The Right to Legal Personhood of Marginalised Groups: Achieving Equal Recognition Before the Law for All by Anna Arstein-Kerslake (Oxford University Press 2024). 160 Pages. Price £90.00. ISBN 9780192843944

Bronwen Manby — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:09:23 +1100

Statelessness In Asia, Edited By Michelle Foster, Jaclyn Neo and Christoph Sperfeldt (Cambridge University Press 2024). 401 Pages. Price Aud201.95. ISBN 9781009399555

Mu'izz Abdul Khalid — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:10:52 +1100

Citizenship and Genocide Cards: IDs, Statelessness and Rohingya Resistance in Myanmar by Natalie Brinham (Routledge 2024). 258 Pages. Price $39.99. ISBN 9781032799261

Zoe Bell — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:13:00 +1100