(Re)Conceptualising 'Stateless Diasporas' in the European Union (original) (raw)

In spite of a boom of ‘expert’ literature and the development of policies to identify and resolve situations of statelessness since the 2000s, little is known about how individuals and groups, who are defined as ‘stateless people’ by ‘experts’, understand such labels and policy categories themselves. To fill this gap, between 2011 and 2015, the comparative research project, (Re)Conceptualising Stateless Diasporas in the European Union, has conducted over one hundred individual interviews and ten household interviews with Kurds, Palestinians, and Roma who hold a wide range of legal statuses in France, Italy, Sweden, and the UK, in order to examine how they construct, negotiate and/or reject both statelessness and diasporic identity in the EU.... Overall, the project has critically explored how individual and collective experiences complement, and at times challenge, the official discourses and policies developed by policy- makers and academics. Transcending the legal focus of much research regarding stateless- ness, this has also entailed exploring key questions pertaining to the diasporic nature of certain stateless groups, examining whether, and how, individuals of Kurdish, Palestinian and Roma backgrounds develop and maintain connections with other members of their com- munities across time and space, and socio-political commitments to their respective home- lands.