No one knows how many people in the world are stateless. The latest estimate from the UN Refugee Agency is at least 4,4 millions people are stateless in legal terms. In his dissertation, Haqqi Bahram interviews stateless Kurds originating from Syria, living in Sweden or Germany.
- We need to start from experiences of people who go through statelessness, who experience this firsthand, in order to be able to see the complexity, and also to legitimize this experience as a source of knowledge, he says.
The experiences of statelessness must be taken seriously
Haqqi Bahram earned his PhD from the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University in January 2025.
- For me it was important to show that what we know about statelessness has been coming mostly from the theorization, the research and the knowledge of people who have not experienced statelessness.
A gap that he has begun to fill, as someone who knows statelessness inside out. This insider position is reflected upon in the dissertation.
- It is important to know about statelessness from the inside as much as it is also important to know about theories, about ways of analyzing the experience from a researcher’s perspective. So I think both perspectives are valid. After all, the boundaries of what is inside and what is outside may not always be clearcut”, he concludes.
The intersection of statelessness and migration is a line of research that has not been studied enough according to Haqqi Bahram. For one thing, establishing identity and country of origin becomes an additional burden on stateless persons who are forced to migrate, since the asylum system is constructed more to accommodate citizens rather than stateless asylum seekers. Haqqi Bahram also found that statelessness leaves a legacy, regardless if a stateless person becomes a citizen or not and if they migrate or not.
- There are a lot of outstanding issues that remain with people, things that may be partially resolved, but also things that might not be resolved at all – even when a person becomes a citizen somewhere.
Shared life circumstances across diverse backgrounds
While the reality of statelessness differs between and within contexts, there are also similarities that make Haqqi Bahram's findings broadly applicable.
- When it comes to what statelessness creates as life conditions it can be similar for people across the world. It can mean not being able to access basic rights, healthcare or welfare services, or not being able to have education. Basic fundamental rights are denied to stateless people and this is a common reality for many groups”, he states.
Looking to the future and possibilities to secure stateless persons’ access to rights in a dignified way, beyond migration and citizenship, Haqqi Bahram refers to research by political philosophers like Hannah Arendt.
- I think my contribution is to show the complexity, but also to be an invitation to do more research on the intersection of statelessness and migration. I hope dissertations like mine can shed light on the phenomena, both looking at the specifics, and statelessness on a larger scale, and see that it is an issue that requires more awareness and knowledge to address.”
