Statelessness and Citizenship: Towards a Theoretical Outlook

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that 10 million persons around the world are denied a nationality and the fundamental rights attached to it. The production of statelessness is increasingly global concern, an iteration occurring in contextually different countries from the Dominican Republic, to Kenya, and Myanmar. However, since Hannah Arendt's reflection on the condition of Statelessness, social and political theory have paid limited attention to the significance of this issue. This paper seeks to develop a theoretical outlook on the causes of current Statelessness in the countries mentioned before. First, it draws upon classic theories of citizenship and a critical interpretative methodology in order to approaches the question of Statelessness as political and historical act. Then it argues that the historically shaped discourses, practices, and self-representations embedded in the form in which a State decides who is a member of its political body sets the course, at the same time, for who will be rendered stateless. The central contention is to challenge Arendt's claim that Nation-States are bounded to produce Stateless people by excluding ethnic minorities. Instead the focus here is to highlight the political history of membership and participation as causes for Statelessness.