A modern history of statelessness and the socio-political question

Mbiyozo (2019) argues that statelessness is a problem that is not new to the international community, as some states implement policies that denationalise their citizens as a form of sanction to exclude individuals they deem undesirable. Denationalisation raises the need to understand the discourse that surrounds statelessness in order to come up with preventive measures. This need, as well as questions such as ‘what is statelessness?’ and ‘within what boundaries can an individual be acknowledged as being stateless?’ informs the necessity for Mira Siegelberg’s book Statelessness: A Modern History. The continuous insistence of states to wield absolute authority over nationality legislation and citizenship makes this book an important and timely intervention. It examines the debates on jurisdiction over nationality legislation, while taking the reader through the necessary journey of understanding how the international legal order defined concepts such as citizenship, nationality etc. Methodologically, Siegelberg presents a chapter-by-chapter periodic historical analysis of the legal theories, writings and debates on statelessness starting from pre-World War I to the postcold war era. The book also focuses on dedicated efforts by the international system to understand statelessness and define what it means in order to formally recognise it, as well as the reactions of intergovernmental organisations. Siegelberg asserts that the central aim of the book is to ‘reconstruct and clarify the arguments that shaped the stabilisation of understanding of citizenships, nationality, and the boundaries of political membership’ (3). In pursuing this, she investigates how the problem of statelessness informed theories of rights, sovereignty, international legal order, and other pertinent legal theories against the formation of the modern interstate order (3). Furthermore, she argues that statelessness exposes the limitation in how statehood and political membership have been defined in international law. There are 6 chapters in the book, each of which contributing to the historical analysis of statelessness, followed by a conclusion providing a balanced insight into the thesis of the book as it beautifully summarises the previous chapters in a way that provides utmost clarity for the reader. The first chapter traces the history of how statelessness moved from a subject of fiction to reality. It starts by showing prior works that have been written on persons without a state who were not acknowledged as stateless. It focuses on the story of Max Stoeck, a former German national who was voluntarily denationalised and moved to Britain to work in a multinational corporation only to escape