> Besides the technical points, that are probably not mirroring much on the
> 'reality' level, I am still wondering why statelessness has not been subjet
> of more attention from critics of immigration policies and immigrant
status in
> general (incl. illegal or cheap labor). There is another text on the un
> site that reflects what was mentioned in the australian thread (the
commitment
> of international institutions to reduce to the minimum movements of
> population) it is the commitment to reduce by all means the number of
stateless. Which
> actually means giving them a nationality... The not so progressive un texts
> mostly show that nation states have full control on who can/can not be a
> national. Even the declaration of human rights does not guarantee the right
> to cross a border.
That's a very concise way of presenting the problem, I think. It seems to me that statelessness, from the perspective of the Declaration of Human Rights, is a zone without recourse to those principles of human rights: citizenship has to be supposed and/or granted in order to give effect to those rights -- at least formally and in principle. Hence the dillema: either statelessness pending the granting of citizenship, admission of nationality pending deportation (Japan), possession of the citizenship documents or detention (France), possession of visa or no recourse to the rights (Australia), or statelessness as a form of temporary, unstable non-existence. Hence also the irresistable compulsion to nationalism and etatisation that every crisis -- ironically, often enough expressed as failures of national-state arrangements and precepts -- becomes an occassion for. Affirming statelessness in this context seems a little like affirming suicide, unless it was merely a fleeting passage between states, citizenship regimes, visas, etc.
I'll check out my refs on this. Something to ponder a little longer, esp as I think of the exception introduced here in 1986 here re the automatic granting of citizenship at birth.
Angela _________