Living without Living: Testimonials of Stateless People

Statelessness has long been studied primarily from a legal perspective, given that nationality is understood as a human right, but is implemented in particularistic ways in the citizenship laws of individual states. What has been lacking so far is a sociological perspective on statelessness that places the experience of being stateless in the context of subjectivation processes, i.e. that focuses on the interplay between subjects and symbolic and material orders and therefore also critically examines the inherent social relations of power and inequality. The exclusions and marginalisations resulting from the contradiction between a universal human right and its particularistic implementation, the associated subjectivating role of the state and the ensuing profound effects of statelessness on those affected are of sociological interest. Statelessness makes it difficult to fulfil even basic needs such as health care, employment or family life. This contribution highlights the lived experience of being statless by conducting a discourse analysis of testimonials in online communities and on websites founded and run by stateless people. It proposes that stateless individuals, by adopting speaker positions, experience themselves as possessing agency in some form despite the obstacles resulting from their status, such as having no freedom of movement. The aim of the project is to reconstruct subject positions and notions of belonging of stateless people in order to uncover political imaginaries beyond the dominant notion of national belonging and potentially provide new starting points for reflections on ending statelessness.