Oscar Gakuo Mwangi, University of Lesotho, argues in Understanding Statelessness, edited by Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (Routledge 2017), that statelessness in the Kenyan context needs to be seen as simultaneously a psychological and a physical condition determined by spatial-political boundaries rather than legal ones.

This challenges the traditional approach to statelessness which sees it as primarily a legal matter of citizenship.

In particular, he uses the example of Somalis experiencing statelessness in Kenya in order to consider statelessness as a result of, and contributing to, ungoverned spaces. He also examines the implications of this for understandings of security. Kenya is a unique case study because of its proximity to Somalia, which is often referred to as a ‘collapsed state’.

Read the article Statelessness, Space, Security, Somalis in Kenya