انعدام الجنسية: تاريخ حديث

by Mira L. Siegelberg, إبتهال الخطيب (ترجمة)

يستعرض كتاب انعدام الجنسية: تاريخ حديث تاريخ انعدام الجنسية منذ أن تجلى بوضوح كظاهرة سياسية، أممية، ذات تبعات اقتصادية واجتماعية هائلة مع نهايات القرن التاسع عشر وبدايات القرن العشرين، تلك الحقبة التي شهدت تحولاً سياسياً وجغرافياً من عالم الامبراطوريات متسعة الرقعة إلى عالم الدول الأممية الحديثة محددة وموثقة الحدود. تركز المؤلفة على تأثير تفاعلات الحربين العالميتين الأولى والثانية، إضافة إلى تأثير فترة الهدنة بينهما، على تشكيل العالم الجديد، هذا العالم الذي فيما كان هو متجهاً نحو تشكيل منظومة حقوقية وإنسانية جديدة تحول الشعوب من رعايا إلى مواطنين مأخوذين بالفكرة السياسية الحديثة لحق تقرير المصير، كان كذلك آخذاً في خلق فئات أقلية غاية في الاستشكالية، أقليات تنهزم كل حقوقها الإنسانية أمام انتصار عملية تشكيل الحدود السياسية وتكوين الدول السيادية.

Genres: History, Politics, Law, Nonfiction, Academic

395 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2020

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a historian, and my area of research is statelessness between the World Wars. So Mira Siegelberg's study on the significance of statelessness for the transformation of international law and the state in the twentieth century was a gift to me, albeit a thorny one as it could have taken away from what I wanted to do. So, needless to say, I was eager to read it.

The truth of the matter is: Despite a flood of publications on migration, flight and displacement, statelessness is very seldom explored in depth and a convincing treatise on the subject has not yet been published. Siegelberg wants to change that: She explores how and why legal and philosophical debates about statelessness fundamentally changed the understanding of international order and international law after the First World War by introducing new “ideas of collective self-determination, sovereignty, political representation, and democratic self-determination ”(p. 4). The material she uses comes from Archives of international politics as well as numerous theoretical treatises, court judgments and private correspondence.

She wants to emphasize the importance of ideas for international politics and develop a historically informed perspective on the current relationship between state and non-state legal systems. It's clearly a book for an interested reader and not for everyone, but for a specialist book it manages to be quite accessible. She tries to link its importance back to todays crises - climate change and flight - and I think this will be useful for people who don't really care all that much about the first half of the last century.

My takeaway? This is an impressive book that brings together different aspects of the historiography of statelessness and stresses the importance of the topic for the 20th century. It differentiates between various sub-groups within the stateless and analyzes their experience and hopes. The book identifies the personal stakes of lawyers and philosophers and traces the meaning of changes in ideas and theories for the real world. The style is easy to read if a bit stiff and overcomplex.

However, I do have some questions. For a book aiming "to reconstruct and clarify the arguments that shaped the eventual stabilization of shared understandings of citizenship and noncitizenship in the decades following the Second World War" (p. 3), 190 pages (out of 230) only on the interwar period and the developments during the Second World war seem too much. Siegelberg's remarks on post-colonial developments and the importance of the “end of history” in the 1990s point to exciting contexts and promising fields of research, but the actual text fall short of expectations. Even if after 1945 the importance of statelessness in the discourses on international politics decreased rapidly, I suspct the reason for this is more of a tactical nature.

A second point of criticism is fundamentally related to the origin of the publication in the history of ideas. Siegelberg fails to always clearly outline the relationship between the history of ideas and contemporary politics, i.e. to clearly delineate the importance of the debates described. To what extent did the legal debates and conferences contribute to a policy change? Did they mirror or follow it?

Despite these criticisms, “Statelessness. A Modern History.“ is pleasant book that enriches the research landscape and gives new impulses to historians. (It did not, however, ruin my PHD. Phew.) Mira Siegelberg demonstrates the importance of statelessness for the system of human rights and international law that emerged after the Second World War. She uses debates about the legal category of statelessness and about concrete solution strategies to describe the change in the international order after 1945.

In short: It might not be a perfect book, but it sure is a good one. And where literature about statelessness is hard to come by, this addition is a breath of fresh air.

[Mohamed Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

كان الكتاب دسما ثقيلا
لا أدي هل لأني لم أقرأ في القانون فضلا عن القانون الدولي من قبل ؟ ان لاني متوقف عن القراءة العامة من وقت طويل ؟ أم مشكلة بالترجمة؟

انعدام الجنسية بدأ بانهيار عصر الامبراطوريات وبداية عصر الدول بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى
ومر بتعقيدات قانونية كثيرة حول صفة المواطنة والجنسية
ومثلت صراعات بين سيادة الدول والقانون الدولي

والنظريات القانونية المختلفة حول اهمية الجنسية والصفة الاعتبارية ودور الفرد في القانون الدولي

ثم ظهرت التحديات مرة أخرى بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية وازاد الجدل حول مدى قدرة تدخل المؤسسات العالمية والقانون الدولي ونظرية الفرد العالمي

وفي الخاتمة تعرض الكاتبة المشكلات الحديثة واحتمالية اختفاء بعض الدول نتيجة التغيرات المناخية وتبعات ذلك على النازحين من تلك الدول.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woof. I am not a legal scholar, nor do I aspire to be one, but if you are/do, you may enjoy this tour of the early-to-mid-20th century history of stateless persons and the ways in which legal academics and philosophers shaped our modern international state-based order. Then again, you may not. A really worthwhile topic but an approach that I couldn't really get excited about: dense with legal theory.

[Faisal Jamal · Rating 3 out of 5]

يناقش الكتاب ظاهرة انعدام الجنسية التي ظهرت بعد انهيار الامبراطوريات بنهاية الحرب العالمية الاولى من الناحية القانونية وامتداداتها للوقت الحالي

[V · Rating 4 out of 5]

extremely academic and informative but will only recommend if you’re doing a DPhil 😬

[Janos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor translation.

[Julian Mydlil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and thought provoking.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not all I hoped it would be in terms of examining the situations that lead to statelessness and the proposed solutions, but it does give a decent overview of the legal debates at the UN.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable arguments, but repetitively written.

[فجر · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب مهم جداً في موضوعه ولكن للأسف الترجمة سيئة جداً.