Having recently emerged from its unenviable status as the runt of international law, the phenomenon of statelessness nonetheless eludes traditional international legal instruments. Confronted with questions of nationality that typically fall within the domain of sovereignty, international and regional human rights bodies struggle to rein in the increasingly creative measures that states adopt to obscure the production and persistence of statelessness. This Article uncovers and dissects the different ways in which states manufacture statelessness not through explicitly discriminatory laws and unequal treatment, but through manipulating ostensibly neutral criteria for nationality. The Article identifies three such criteria that are not traditionally considered “suspect” categories for the grant or denial of nationality: time, territory, and administrative practice. It also suggests doctrinal, policy, and strategic tools for identifying and responding to the types of statelessness that are not a collateral consequence of state failure or incompetence, but the outcome of state intentionality.

无国籍现象最近摆脱了其作为国际法残缺的不令人羡慕的地位，但仍然避开了传统的国际法律文书。面对通常属于主权领域的国籍问题，国际和区域人权机构努力控制各国采取的越来越有创意的措施，以掩盖无国籍状态的产生和持续存在。本文揭示并剖析了国家制造无国籍状态的不同方式，这些方式不是通过明确的歧视性法律和不平等待遇，而是通过操纵表面上中立的国籍标准。该条确定了传统上不被视为授予或拒绝国籍的“可疑”类别的三个此类标准：时间、领土、和行政实践。它还提出了理论、政策和战略工具，用于识别和应对非国家失败或无能的附带后果，而是国家意图的结果的无国籍类型。