The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What Does it Mean to be Stateless?

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

How can a person end up as a citizen of nowhere? Author and law professor Jamie Chai Yun Liew explains in her book: "Ghost Citizens: Decolonial Apparitions of Stateless, Foreign and Wayward Figures in Law."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. In a fractured information environment, isn't it hard to tell what's real and what's not? I'm Molly Thomas, host of a new show called Big If True. We're fighting misinformation one story at a time. Subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Instagram. What does it mean to be stateless and how can a person end up as a citizen of nowhere? Author

Jamie Chai Yun Liu explores these questions in her new book Ghost Citizens Decolonial Apparitions of Stateless Foreign and Wayward Figures in Law. She's also a professor of law at the University of Ottawa and she joins us in studio for more. Hello Jamie. Hi. Thank you so much for joining us in studio. Let's start off right off the bat with a definition. What is a ghost citizen? A ghost citizen is a term I use to describe stateless people, people without citizenship to any country whatsoever, who live in a country that they consider their home, but for whatever reason, they aren't able to get the legal documentation or the confirmation that they are citizens of the place that they reside in. I think for a lot of Canadians, Ontarians, the idea of being born in a place and not having citizenship or paperwork associated

might be mind-boggling for them. How does a person become stateless? In various ways. So people can become stateless by virtue of just not having registered their birth. In some countries you don't get citizenship by being born in territories, but you have to prove that you meet the requirements such as you have a parent or a guardian that has citizenship in that country. So some people might lose it because they aren't able to establish that they have the requirements or the links or they might have lost documentation on some tragic stories about documents getting lost in the shuffle over generations of people or just having a fire in their

home and losing very important documentation. So there's a variety of ways in which people become stateless. All right I want to read a little excerpt from your book. It reads, some parents have not told their children that they are stateless for fear of how it would affect their mental health or their interactions with others in their community. Further, stateless persons recounted their experiences through tears, regret, and frustration, asking why they could not be treated like a community member or a fellow human being. They invariably expressed their surprise when they were treated like a foreigner or someone who has committed fraud. So help us understand this. So not all stateless people know they're stateless.

How does that come to be? A huge proportion of stateless people around the world are children because they're born and are not given citizenship by the country of their birth, or their parents aren't able to register or obtain citizenship for them. And many of the parents that I've talked to in my research told me that they understand what it would do to a child because of the stress

they themselves feel in terms of trying to access things like education, health care, and other services for their children. And they don't want their children to have to feel different or experience any bullying or backlash from that lack of citizenship. And so their parents, you know, guard that information and if possible try to help them navigate the world. But it usually hits a snag at some point because children grow as you know and need to access things on their own and it's sometimes become a very tragic story about how children learn learn that they have become stateless as a result of, you know, I would say errors

or badly structured laws. Well let's talk about you talk about the role of parents I want to talk about the role of government. You, the term gaslighting has become very popular recently but you use it to refer to states and their stateless residents. In your view how are governments gaslighting stateless people? Yeah, there's, you know, the term of my, the title of my book, Ghost Citizens, really kind of encapsulates, you know, the major findings of my research, which is the first thing is states were kind of ghosting. So many of your, you know, listeners or viewers of this show might understand it from the

dating scene where somebody just completely cuts off contact or does not respond to any communication from a person that you might have gone on a date with. And so states are doing this to stateless people. People might put in citizenship applications or they might make queries or ask for assistance from government officials and they're simply not getting any answers or they're getting wrong answers or taking down paths that aren't going to get them citizenship or they're just being told, listen, you're not of our concern.

We're not going to help you because we don't believe you are one of us. So this term of ghost citizen really encapsulates the experience of people who have been told you're not one of us. We're not going to help you, we're going to deny you citizenship. And on the flip side, you know, while they're denying and ghosting these people, they're also gaslighting their experience in the sense that they're telling them you're actually a citizen of elsewhere. Somewhere else. You're a foreigner, your citizenship is an issue with another country and you're not

our problem. And it's curious because most people have very weak or tangential links to other countries. And usually the state will point to, well, your mother is a citizen of Thailand, of China, other countries. And this is absent any evidence that they are eligible or have been conferred citizenship elsewhere. Very interesting. You have a personal connection to this issue because of your father. Can you tell us a little bit about his story? Yeah, my father was born stateless. He was born in a country called Brunei.

And he was stateless for the first quarter of his first 25 years of his life, I would say. And it affected him profoundly. He used to tell me when I was younger that he was stateless and how it made him feel, how he was denied opportunities for further education. It really shaped his decisions in his life. I think it also affected his mental health. And when I was younger, I used to think it was a really strange and unique story. But when I became a lawyer and started to see clients who were

also stateless, and then when I became a legal scholar, I started to read an immense body of work that started to emerge around who are stateless and how they become stateless, I began to realize that my dad's story is quite typical and start to investigate it myself. And I think, you know, one of the lessons that I've learned from my dad is that I think it's important to talk about it. Like he was very open about it with me, which is very unusual for Asian parents. And in fact, a lot of people in my family who migrated to Canada to become citizens can't talk about it today.

The trauma of being stateless really has prevented them from being able to do so. And so I feel duty bound to share our story, to create more awareness around the situation and to say that it is not a strange, unique or uncommon and that there needs to be more attention paid to how we can resolve this issue. Was there, I'm just curious, was there a little bit of shame? I know you said that your father was open about it with you, but you know, having this secret, this open secret within your family, did you growing up feel a little shame of that?

For sure. I felt like I was very different from other Asian families. You hear their migration stories or why they came to Canada or how they came to Canada, and mine was very different. And so personally, I did feel that. I'm sure my father felt that too. And then the ways he talks about it, I think he felt like he was treated less than human, subhuman. He used those words that he felt like he was rightless. So it can have a profound impact on the way that people see themselves and the way that they might interact with the world.

So in that particular example with your father, born in Brunei, but what was his paperwork saying that he was from when we talk about that gaslighting? Yeah. So his paperwork just said that he was a subject, a British protected subject, but it was, you know, for many people who have traced British colonization and their modes of categorizing people and the ways in which they counted and conducted their census. There are categories of British subjects in law. And being a British subject didn't necessarily mean you were entitled to British citizenship

or citizenship of the colony that you were in. And I think, you know, countries like Brunei and Malaysia, the subject of my book, they inherited and incorporated the vestiges of colonial law and the ideas around hierarchies of citizenship. And so my father's story is really born out of a colonial history about the ways in which the British came, divided and separated people and categorized them and then gave them different ideas of citizenship that have really permeated in many post-British colonial states today. I'm curious, before we dive into the main research

of your book in Malaysia, you had talked about 10 million. You referenced 10 million stateless people, many of them children. I'm curious, do we actually have confidence in that figure? Is that number smaller? Is that number bigger? Where are we getting that information data? Yeah, that number comes from the United Nations, and it's an estimate. And they themselves don't really know the number. And the reason for that is because stateless people don't necessarily want to be counted or known to the government, because they could be detained, they could be deported to countries they've never been to.

That's happened to stateless people. So the risk of coming out or being known to a government to be counted is severe. And stateless people know this. In order to survive, they kind of sometimes have to work behind the scenes or hide in the shadows, which feeds into why I use the term ghost citizen, too. A lot of stateless people survive by passing through life in a ghost-like existence.

So we don't really know the numbers. And my estimate is that it's much higher because of the fears and the repercussions that stateless people experience. All right, you conducted, as you mentioned, your research for this book in Malaysia. We have a map to remind people what area of the world we're talking about. The highlighted portion here shows the two land masses

that make up Malaysia, partly on the Malaya Peninsula and partly on the island of Borneo on the left over there. Why is Malaysia the right place to study this issue? Because, you know, you would think that Brunei would be the place that you would start your research, but there's some challenges there. But why Malaysia? Yeah, I did initially want to go to Brunei, the place of my

father's birth, to study this. But Brunei is not a democratic country. When I went there, there were a lot of people who told me that they were fearful of speaking openly about this issue for fear of repercussions from the Sultan of Brunei and his government there. And I completely understand that. But my mother was born in Malaysia. I have family there.

And I went there and found a vibrant advocacy network of stateless persons and lawyers, paralegals, NGOs that were working to help stateless people there. And so one of the other reasons was that Malaysia is very similar to other countries where there are large populations of stateless people. For example, a lot of post-British colonial states feature a lot of the same legal frameworks, administrative government structures that contribute to the creation and maintenance of statelessness.

And so I feel like Malaysia is a nice case study upon which you could kind of take, you know, my framing of ghost citizens and implant it on other countries to test whether or not these same modes and practices on that governments are, you know, issuing against stateless people in the same ways. You write Canada is normalizing citizenship deprivation resulting in cases of stateless people in the same ways. You write, Canada is normalizing citizenship deprivation resulting in cases of statelessness. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, so Canada is not immune from creating

and maintaining statelessness in our borders. There are some very troubling cases where some people have been made stateless because they've been found inadmissible to Canada and therefore undeserving or unworthy due to being in conflict with the law or engaging in criminal behavior. There's some pretty big cases in the Supreme Court. Yes, criminal behavior.

But also I would say more troubling is in the refugee law field where people have come to seek asylum and yet our decision makers don't really grapple or understand that statelessness in and of itself could be a factor or a reason why people should be seeking asylum. And our laws are not built to provide accommodations for stateless people in order for them to obtain status and to become regular members of our society. All right.

I want to read another excerpt from your book. It reads, My father often said his early life as a stateless person was a purgatory. Like him, many stateless people experience an administrative death, be it at birth, at a government encounter later in life, or during an encounter with police or other state authorities. Stateless persons avoid the notice of governments when they work under the table to avoid detention and possible deportation. But at other times they want to be seen, for example when they need health care, education, employment, housing and belonging. You had mentioned a little bit about growing up and the

need for that as well. Can you explain the concept of administrative death? Yeah, I think it's one of the most interesting findings of my research, is that I shadowed people going to a government counter to ask for help, to ask for forms. And in Malaysia, some people were outright denied even a form. And in Malaysia, you need a particular form to apply for citizenship. It has its own serial number, so each form is unique on its own. And so you couldn't just photocopy a form once you got one to give to people. So witnessing how the government authorities were actively denying people access to forms,

giving wrong information, I saw paralegals and lawyers quote constitutional provisions in order to lobby government officials to obtain information and forms for their clients. So it's not for the faint of heart in order for some to be able to get access to the very services that we expect governments to issue towards people within their borders, right? I'm curious, how do stateless people balance the need to be undetected by their governments with the desire to be seen and recognized by them. Yeah, I think more and more stateless people feel

that public advocacy has been a method to resolve their statelessness. You know, I followed one particular woman who was able to resolve her statelessness, and she used public advocacy quite well. She was very articulate. She was, you know, and her case was very sad because her administrative death happened at a government counter when a government official told her, you don't look like a citizen.

We're going to look at your birth certificate, which lists your citizenship, and they revoked it. And so there's a lot of, you know, informal decisions made at the government counter that have substantive impacts. And I think when those things happen, stateless people find it cathartic to talk about it in the public, but also might be able to gain public attention and sympathy in order to resolve their individual cases. You know, having said that, it doesn't really lead to wholesaler systemic change in the system. I'm curious about the role of international law and human rights regimes when it comes to stateless people. What can they do? Because there is, you know, there's lots of conventions.

Whether states adhere to them is a whole other thing. But yeah, what is the role? Yeah, so one role that international law can play is, you know, it already recognizes that there are stateless people. It recognizes that status. However, it gives a lot of prerogative power to states, like a veto power, to say, we get to decide who our members are. I'd love to see a pushback in the international community with regards to the power that's given states to just deny wholesale and this very powerful role in recognizing people and

giving identification or legal existence really. So, you know, a rethinking about the ways in which we organize our communities and how people should be recognized as part of our community. We have a few minutes left now, a couple of questions. You also use the term ghost citizens to refer to how myths about stateless people are haunting.

Can you expand on that for us a little? Yeah, I think it's very apropos to our times right now and the ways in which there's a lot of fear about people who we may not understand are migrating, moving within our borders, and even people who are within our communities but somehow don't have the right status to be able to live like we do. So I think the term ghost citizen really fuels and highlights the experience that some people

experience in terms of how they're being described in the public. So some of them were described as foreigners and when they didn't feel like they were foreigners. Some people were described as terrorists, as criminals, as fraudsters for trying to cheat the system. These are very common words that we see in the public domain in terms of how we talk about different racialized predominantly groups of people in many parts of the world today. And so, you know, part of the research is a plea to kind of take a step back and say, before we use those terms, who are we really talking about? Are those fair to be using, given the challenges that the state and the legal framework has put in front of them?

All right, so let's say we have the ears of some very powerful people. What should be done to improve the lives of stateless people, both in Malaysia, for example, or here in Canada? Yeah, in Malaysia, there's been some troubling developments where there have been moves to try to amend the constitution to create more statelessness. So I would say, hopefully, politicians there are looking at ways to reduce statelessness rather than to close

up the border, so to speak. Here in Canada, I guess I would say to really humanize the people behind the stories that we hear, there's so much fear and I guess misunderstanding behind who are the people that are applying for status in Canada, for citizenship, and not to assume they're not from here, not to assume that they aren't, you know, don't have a genuine or authentic connection to Canada. And we, I think, really need to rethink ways in which we recognize who are members of our society, and more importantly, how we treat people on a more compassionate and human level. Jamie, we're going to leave it there. I want to thank you so much for coming in and for your work as well.

Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. Appreciate it.