This project was concluded in July 2021.
Project information
Project manager
Barzoo Eliassi
Financier
Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
Timetable
1 Jan 2018-31 Dec 2019
Subject
Social Work (Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences)
More about the project
This research project investigates statelessness and political belonging in a world of unequal nation-states and citizenship regimes. Previous research has largely viewed acquisition of a citizenship as a solution to statelessness. While holding citizenship is central to human rights, the experiences of statelessness do not fade away through acquisition of formal citizenship, as the persistent political and militant struggles of stateless groups show around the world. Thus, it is important to investigate how political projects that guide political belonging and collective action are constructed among nations without states. Political belonging creates collective goals to sustain, challenge or transform political order.
The project combines theoretical deliberations about statelessness and citizenship with empirical fieldwork among members of nations without states. Through deploying a narrative inquiry and in-depth interviews, this project uses the narratives of Kurdish and Palestinian migrants in Sweden and UK to analyze how national consciousness emerges in the absence of a nation-state, but also the role of the idea of nation-state in shaping discourses about statelessness and political belonging outside of the "original" homelands. The project is not only a timely contribution to the politically contentious debates on Palestinian and Kurdish statehood, but it will also contribute theoretically and empirically to the broader debates of statelessness and citizenship studies.
The project is part of the research in the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies research group.
