Tides of Change: Past, Present, and Future of the Statelessness Field

Mobility Law Open Lab with Laura Van Waas

Presenter: Laura van Waas co-founded the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) in 2014, with the aim of catalysing action, building coalitions and journeying together with others, to collectively challenge the manufacturing of statelessness and the denial of rights to those without citizenship status. She has focused on this underserved issue throughout her career, working previously on statelessness within academia and at the UN. She approaches the pursuit of change with a systems mindset, understanding that while statelessness has different causes and affects people differently across different contexts, there are shared factors that can shift the conditions enabling its persistence. Under her co-leadership, ISI has been a multiplier for impact by advancing field-level knowledge, infrastructure, resourcing and collective action. She is also a co-founding steering group member of the Global Statelessness Fund and a founding co-editor-in-chief of the Statelessness and Citizenship Review.

Presentation:

Since the early 2010s, the issue of statelessness has rapidly evolved from a “forgotten human rights crisis” into a vibrant field of scholarship, policy and practice. Today, however, the field is coming of age just as the broader human rights and social justice ecosystem faces its most severe battering in decades. Funding is drying up, international institutions are being eroded, civic space is shrinking; all while the drivers of statelessness – including authoritarianism, nationalism and othering – are on the rise. Before the statelessness field has the opportunity to consolidate, it therefore faces a crunch point, in which it must confront deep questions about its strategies and its future.

This session invites you to reflect on how the statelessness field might plot a course forwards in uncertain times. Taking inspiration from foresight methods, it engages with the future by taking a fresh look at the field’s journey so far, revealing additional layers to the story of its emergence from which strength can be drawn. It also identifies and examines a number of chronic blockers that persist in the present and considers how these might be reckoned with. Finally, it suggests what tools, methods and mindsets the field can cultivate or adopt to stave off the threat of fracture and retreat, and to shape a more desirable future.

Time: 11 November 2026 13:30 – 14:45

Place: 6B-2-22 South Campus MOBILE Institute (+Online)

Online participation: For online participation, please contact MOBILE's student assistant Oscar at kth901@jur.ku.dk to receive a Zoom link.