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On the threshold of statelessness: Palestinian narratives of loss and erasure

ABSTRACT This article examines how Palestinians in Europe negotiate, mobilise, and/or resist, and ultimately problematise, notions of statelessness as a concept and as a marker of identity. Centralising Palestinians’ conceptualisations in this manner – including accounts which directly challenge academics’ and policy-makers’ definitions of the problem of, and solution to, statelessness – is particularly important given that statelessness emerges as both a condition and a label that erase the ability to speak, and be heard. The article starts by examining perceptions of statelessness as a marker of rightlessess, home(land)lessness and voicelessness. It then explores statelessness through the paradigm of the ‘threshold’, reflecting both on interviewees’ ambiguity towards this label, status, and condition, and the extent to which even Palestinians who hold citizenship remain ‘on the threshold of statelessness’. It concludes by reflecting on interviewees’ rejection of a label that is imposed upon them ‘from a distance’ via bureaucratic processes in Europe.