Stateless - an ethnography of statelessness November 20, 2024 13:40

The plight of a stateless man in Singapore with no formal education and job prospects made national headlines recently, culminating in a wave of support and a job offer. As of Dec 31, 2023, there were 853 stateless people living in Singapore, and the UNHCR estimates that there are at least 4.4 million people who are stateless worldwide, including the Bajau Laut in Malaysia, the Yao, Hmong and Karen people in Thailand, the Kurds in Syria, and the Rohingyas, who make up the world's largest stateless population.

Author Chen Tienshi Lara was born to Chinese parents in Yokohama’s Chinatown. When Japan terminated its diplomatic ties with the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1972, she was one of the 9,200 Chinese residents rendered stateless. In her memoir, aptly titled Stateless, Chen deftly blends autobiography with a study of stateless communities around Asia, to explore questions of borders, mobility, belonging and identity. 

Read an excerpt from her fascinating book below!

Prof Wang Gungwu with author Chen Tienshi Lara at the book discussion of Stateless at the Book Bar, 14 July 2024. 

Prologue

In the springtime of the year that I was 21, I found myself stuck at the
border between two familiar countries, unable to enter either. I had
never felt my statelessness so keenly. Rejected by the Republic of China
(Taiwan), which I had long considered my homeland, I was told that I
could not enter Japan, the country of my birth and upbringing.

For the first time in my life, I experienced the terror of international
limbo, unable to enter any country. What would happen to me? Would I
be trapped forever in an airport?

To be stateless is to be someone without citizenship, a national of
no country. Around the world and for myriad reasons, people fall into
conditions of statelessness. Little is known about their experiences.

That year, the long Golden Week holiday running from late April
through early May was over. The day that we left Japan, Tokyo’s Haneda
Airport was pretty much empty. A few travelers were taking it easy. A
handful passed through the departure gate. A Ministry of Justice passport
inspector at the exit customs, perhaps relieved the holiday rush was over,
spoke to us with a kind voice.

“Going on a family trip after the holidays? Must be nice!”

My father answered affably. “Yes, I’m taking my wife and youngest
daughter to a gathering in the Philippines.” Mama and I smiled. Basking
in excitement, the three of us passed the gate without incident.

My family lived in Yokohama’s Chinatown. Mama and I were
accompanying Baba to a gathering of overseas Chinese in the Philippines.
We were in the Philippines for four days. Because the return flight home
to Japan stopped over in Taiwan, Mama suggested we meet one of my
elder brothers who was working there. It was also an opportunity to briefly
visit the country that my family also considered home. Born in mainland
China, my parents had moved to Taiwan after World War II, then later
migrated to Japan.

We landed in Taipei around midday. Deplaning, the three of us heard
spoken Chinese and smelled the stale, humid air. At that point in my life,
I referred to travel to Taiwan as “returning to Taiwan” (hui Taiwan). Of
our family of eight (two parents, six kids), I was the youngest child, and
the only one that had been both born and raised in Japan. I had never
lived in Taiwan. But since childhood, my parents had taught me to “live
proudly as a Chinese national,” so I naturally called the Republic of China
(ROC) my home country.

Although they too were technically stateless, my parents carried
identification that verified their official Republic of China family registry,
since they had previously lived there. Walking ahead of me, they sailed
through customs. On my turn, I handed over my Republic of China
passport to an immigration officer in her early thirties.

Taiwan’s nationality law is based on jus sanguinis and regards ethnic
Chinese living abroad as emigrant compatriots, or qiaobao. A special
law in force from 1972 through the early 1990s accommodated overseas
Chinese, regulating their citizenship and stipulating passport issuance at
overseas diplomatic missions to those without citizenship. Although I was
officially stateless in Japan, I had been issued a Republic of China passport
and used that whenever traveling abroad. I naturally expected that the
passport would gain me entrance to Taiwan.

The immigration officer flipped through the pages of my Republic of
China passport, then sucker punched me.

“You cannot enter without a visa.”

“What? I have a Taiwanese passport. Why do I need a visa?”

I tried to explain my situation, but she just shook her head. I insisted.
A few other immigration officers came over and glanced at my passport.
They wouldn’t budge.

My parents were staring over at me with growing anxiety about what
was going on at the other side of the border. All I could do was shout to
them that I couldn’t enter the country.

“They’re saying I can’t go through!”

Bewildered and confused, my parents were unable to return to my
side to ask what was happening, since they had already completed the
immigration process and officially entered the Republic of China. The
immigration officer hurried them away from the immigration checkpoint.

I had to board the next flight to Japan.

I later discovered that my parents’ family register didn’t include my
name, since I had been born in Japan and never lived in Taiwan. Before
I was born, my parents and siblings had lived in Taiwan for more than a
decade. They all had a family register and identification papers to prove
it. Because of this, the procedures for my entering Taiwan differed from
those for my parents. Despite my ROC passport, because I was not listed
on the family register, I was officially considered to be a visitor from abroad
who needed a visa to enter.

Refused entry to what I considered to be my homeland, I had to board
the next plane back to Japan, heartbroken. After landing alone at Haneda
Airport, all I could think of was getting home as soon as possible. Our
parents had called ahead to my elder sister, telling her: “Tiens-hi will be
going back to Japan by herself.” She was waiting for me at the arrivals gate.
Anxious to see her, I hurried towards customs.

A stateless, permanent resident of Japan must present a re-entry permit
and alien registration card every time they enter Japan. The immigration
officer looked puzzled when examining mine. Told to wait at a bench in
the back, I had a sinking feeling that I would be refused entry.

A few foreigners sat nervously on the bench with me. The long customs
queue dwindled over the next hour. Then, one at a time, we were called
over to an office. I entered. The agent got straight to the point and told
me to go back to Taiwan immediately. I could not enter Japan because my
re-entry permit had expired.

“I am a permanent resident and live in Yokohama. I just came back to
Japan because I could not enter Taiwan.”

The immigration officer expressed indifference; it was not his concern.

“Even a permanent resident cannot enter Japan with an expired re-entry
permit. If you leave the country without renewing your re-entry permit, it
means you have no intention of returning to Japan.”

Were the ties that bound me to Japan so frail and transitory? It was as if
I were a mere particle of dust swept away by a broom. Not only did nobody
care if I existed; they preferred my not being around as the tidier option.
Frustration and anger swelled in me, making it tough to remain calm.

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“I don’t know. But you cannot enter Japan with these documents.”

I was on the verge of bursting into tears when other agents just finishing
their shifts entered. One of them turned to me:

“Hey, aren’t you the kid who left a few days ago with your parents? Is
that your sister outside?”

Waiting outside the gate, my sister had noticed something wrong.
She had apparently spoken to the agents, asking them to let me through,
saying she could vouch for me.

“Did you come back all alone?”

It was the same friendly inspector who had handled our family’s exit
customs when we left for the Philippines several days earlier. I kept quiet,
not knowing where to begin.

“I’m sending her back right now,” the stricter official said.

“Why? What happened?” The friendly inspector looked surprised.

“Her re-entry permit is expired.”

“What? No way!”

The friendly inspector stared at my brown re-entry book, wide-eyed.
My re-entry permit had already expired by the day of our departure, the
day that agent had facilitated our exit from Japan without noticing my
permit’s expiry date. My interrogator pressed the inspector.

“Wait a minute. Weren’t you the one who didn’t check the expiration
date and let her leave with an expired permit?”

The agents left the room, then returned with a heavy file. They rifled
through the documents.

“Oh, good, good!” the friendly inspector said. He pulled out my exit
document from the week before, took out a stamp, recalibrated the date,
then used it to retrospectively stamp the file and my re-entry permit,
thwomp, thwomp.

“Luckily, no one has applied at this office for re-entry permission since
you left that day.” I had no idea what was happening. “I’m issuing you a
one-time re-entry permission backdated to the day you left the country.
You can enter Japan now. That’ll be 3,000 yen.”

I paid the fee and went through the gate. My sister, who had been
waiting in the arrival lobby, ran up and hugged me.

“What happened? I was so worried!”

On our way home, I explained to her what had happened, although I was
still confused. I was also exhausted from frustration at the pointlessness of
the ordeal. Even to this day, I feel uncomfortable when I hear someone say
they will return to Taiwan or return to Japan.

Where do I belong? What is my nationality? With that traumatic
travel experience, I felt my identity begin to crumble, as if I had been
transformed into a speck of dust, easily swept away, needed by no one. In
one day, I learned firsthand how nation, nationality, and national borders
can exclude people.

I had a painful lesson about what it means to be stateless that day.
Afterwards, I shut my shock away deep into the recesses of my heart. I
told no one. I figured that few people would understand, and to be honest,
it made me feel somehow inferior. In conversation, I tried to avoid the
topic. Many days, though, I could not avoid coming face to face with my
statelessness. When asked to show my ID to rent an apartment, open a
bank account, or the like, I would reluctantly pull my ID card out of my
wallet. The face of the person asking me invariably turned gloomy upon
seeing the word mukokuseki on my Japanese ID card. They would furrow
their brows, screw up their face as if they were having trouble hearing
me, and ask, “what does it mean that you are stateless?” They would then
usually ask me for supplementary documentation in order to demonstrate
that I was a trustworthy person—such as proof of a bank balance or proof
of my school attendance.

I was studying international relations, and decided to take a hiring test
at the United Nations, which was the very international body that was
supposed to support and protect stateless people. Surely, the UN would be
a good place for me to work. My heart leaped when I was notified that I
had passed the documentary stage of the vetting process. But when I went
to New York for an interview, I discovered that I had been naïve. At my
interview, I was told that they could not consider hiring a stateless person;
I could reapply to the UN after getting Japanese citizenship.

This was yet another example of the social reality that emerged because
of the creation of nation states. Being stateless brought with it extra
trouble and required endless patience. The frustration that I felt then
later drove me to research stateless people and ultimately become active
in supporting them.

Ten Million Worldwide?

In my research on and by speaking with stateless persons, I found that
the reasons that people became stateless and the situations they found
themselves in varied quite a bit. Stateless people have no legal connection to
any nation state and no citizenship. They are not considered full members
of any country, nor do they have the corresponding rights and obligations
of citizens. There are even people who are effectively stateless, who despite
holding identification that indicates citizenship are still denied the rights
of citizens. Whereas stateless people can obtain residence rights in Japan,
in other countries they may not have access to registration or residence
rights. Those without residence rights are often an invisible underclass
whose very existence is officially denied.

The reason for a person’s stateless designation can depend on a number
of factors, including their birth nation’s circumstances, international
relations, and that person’s particular narrative. As with the former Soviet
Union or former Yugoslavia, the collapse of the nation state and changes
to territorial rights might cause statelessness, or statelessness can be caused
by diplomatic agreements or changes, in cases such as my own.

Some children fall through the cracks of different nations’ nationality
laws, as a result of international marriages or migration. This is true for
the many Amerasians in Okinawa as well as for out-of-wedlock children
who have been born to a Japanese man and to one of the growing numbers
of Filipina women. Since the 1990s, these women have come to Japan as
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), many of them are dancers. Adding
to these, there are many Rohingya persons who become stateless due to
ethnic discrimination and a large category of people who fall stateless due
to administrative errors.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is
known mainly for aiding refugees, but they also have expanded their work
to provide aid to stateless persons. The number of stateless persons around
the world was estimated at 10 million in 2016, 3.9 million in 2018, and 4.2
million in 2020, according to a UNHCR poll. These wildly fluctuating
numbers raise serious questions about the validity of such data collection.
Researching and proving a negative (a lack of citizenship) is quite a
formidable task, so it’s no surprise that figures are not reliable.

The UNHCR has led a campaign to reduce to zero the number of
stateless persons in the world by 2024. To that end, the UNHCR has
called on countries to sign both the Convention Relating to the Status
of Stateless Persons (1954) and the Convention on the Reduction of
Statelessness (1961). Japan has ratified neither of these treaties, although
some of its residents are stateless.

I was stateless for more than three decades, and my experience led me to
research stateless persons for two more decades. Modern society seems to
accept the concept of nationality with neither qualms nor questions about
the defects and discriminatory practices inherent in the system itself.
However, outmoded ideas of nationality can no longer accommodate
the changing conditions of modern lives. In this era of globalization,
we must now more than ever deepen our understanding of the meaning
of citizenship and take ownership of the problems engendered by such
constructs.

Nationality tends to get discussed from a legal perspective, leading
many to conclude that it’s a thorny issue. There’s even a push to eliminate
statelessness based on the idea that human rights are better protected
because nationality and citizenship exist. This book will look at nationality
from an anthropological perspective. I would like to consider and gain
an understanding of nationality—which is deeply tied to our identities
and daily lives—from a perspective of personal accountability. This book
will focus on stateless persons themselves, recording through interviews
show how they came to be stateless, what each of these individuals has
experienced and thinks about those experiences, and how they identify
themselves. I will explore the nature of statelessness through these
personalized, individualized perspectives. It’s difficult to change the
core aspect of the issues, such as the relevant laws. But by deepening our
understanding of nationality from the softer aspect that is the experience
of fellow human beings, I aim with this book to speculate on the nature of
humans, society and new global bonds.