A new briefing, Stateless People in the UK: at risk of legal limbo, in need of protection 

Guest post Sophie Cartwright. Sophie is the Senior Policy Officer at the Jesuit Refugee Service UK, and a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology. The Jesuit Refugee Service UK, Asylum Aid, the University of Liverpool Law Clinic, the European Network on Statelessness, and JustRight Scotland have released a new joint policy briefing: Stateless People in the UK: at risk of legal limbo, in need of protection (January 2025).

Stateless people are defined under the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons as “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. Very often, they hold no legal right to live in any country. Statelessness is growing globally, across Europe, and in the UK. It has a variety of causes. For instance, it can occur when borders are redrawn or contested, often in the context of conflict; where specific groups within a country are excluded from citizenship; or when children are born in a country where their parents are not citizens and can access nationality neither there nor in the country of their parents. A large proportion of stateless people in the UK, and elsewhere, are also refugees, or otherwise forcibly displaced.  

Two post-Second war Conventions on Statelessness oblige signatories, including the UK, to protect stateless people. Yet the UK continues to fall short in this regard. This new briefing seeks to draw attention to this crucial but frequently sidelined issue. 

At the Jesuit Refugee Service UK (JRS UK) in London, we support stateless people who have unsuccessfully claimed asylum and whose appeal rights have been exhausted. Like others refused asylum, they are made destitute. Barred from working or accessing public funds, they have no formal way to support themselves and therefore are profoundly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and long-term ill-health. While others without legal immigration status encounter similar problems, stateless people face specific challenges in resolving their situation.  

In 2013, the UK adopted a statelessness determination procedure. At JRS UK we have found that this process has many problems: it places heavy a burden of proof on stateless people; it has very few checks and balances on erroneous decision-making; stateless people often face delays, waiting years for a response; and, notably, there is no right of appeal if one is refused. Given that approximately half of initial asylum refusals are overturned on appeal by the courts, there is good reason to think this is a grave omission. 

Statelessness is inherently difficult to prove. A person has to prove a negative – that they are not recognised as a national by any state. Typically, they need to show that they have tried and failed to obtain nationality documents. However, embassies frequently refuse to engage with people they do not recognise as their nationals, and refuse them entry, treatment that can also be difficult to evidence.  

Problems with the determination procedure are compounded by the UK-wide crisis of non-availability of immigration and asylum legal advice. Here, too, stateless people face distinctive and acute problems since statelessness is out of scope for automatic legal aid in England and Wales and right across the UK over-stretched legal advisors struggle to take on complex cases.  

Those who are, eventually, recognised as stateless under the determination process face further hurdles to rebuilding their lives. Citizenship fees can be prohibitively expensive, keeping individuals locked out of a nationality even once the UK government says they can access it.  And in January 2024, the government changed the immigration rules to make it significantly harder for stateless people to reunite with their family.  

Stateless people are all too often invisible in a world of borders. They are profoundly marginalised. And even where systems are there that should enable them to regularise their status, they face an uphill battle. This new briefing draws out the issues they face in the UK context, and some key changes that need to be made. 

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