Research
Intersectionality as method for human rights research: Identifying who is made stateless and how through UN treaty body reviews
Allison J. Petrozziello
Few theories have generated the kind of international and interdisciplinary engagement as intersectionality. Nevertheless, intersectionality as a research paradigm has yet to gain ground in human rights research. People can experience the same rights violation on multiple grounds, yet human rights research design and methods—like rights frameworks and treaty bodies themselves—tend to examine each form of discrimination separately or additively. This article demonstrates the value of intersectionality as a methodological approach for human rights research by discussing feminist methodological insights developed through a global qualitative study of exclusionary birth registration practices that lead to statelessness. The discussion highlights three intersections that block access to birth certificates: gender, religious, and ethnic discrimination at the civil registrar; disability and ethnic discrimination in contexts of mobility; and discrimination based on gender, race, and migration status in reproductive healthcare. The conclusion offers human rights researchers an intersectional method for analyzing observations from all human rights mechanisms on a particular issue, to gain a more fulsome understanding of the operations of power that violate rights.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2025) Intersectionality as method for human rights research: Identifying who is made stateless and how through UN treaty body reviews, Journal of Human Rights, 24:2, 182-198, DOI: 10.1080/14754835.2025.2477493
Street-Level Bureaucrats Manufacturing Migrants: An Implementation Study of Intentionally Ambiguous Policy Measures to Address Statelessness in the Dominican Republic.
Allison J. Petrozziello
Migration policy implementation studies based on Western European or North American contexts may assume that those affected by a given policy are indeed migrants. In developing country contexts, where undocumented nationals can be indistinguishable from the foreign-born, implementation enables street-level bureaucrats to manufacture migrants out of those deemed not to belong through administrative manoeuvres.
The Dominican Republic provides a critical instance of how street-level bureaucrats can make migrants out of people who never crossed an international border, with devastating impacts on their access to social rights. Most scholarship on the case comes from international law and investigates the 2013 Constitutional Court sentence which retroactively stripped citizenship from an estimated 133,770 descendants of Haitian migrants born in the country dating back to 1929. Less scholarly attention has examined the implementation of subsequent policy measures adopted by the Dominican state—regularisation for migrants, naturalisation for their descendants. Conceptually, this paper situates itself within critical policy studies, combining insights from the bottom-up literature on implementation studies in the “Global South” and critical analysis of policy implementation.
Drawing on a case study complemented by ethnographic observations, the paper argues that in developing country contexts characterised by “intentional ambiguity” (Frost), policy implementation can perpetuate the very problem the policy purports to address. Intentionally ambiguous implementation can serve as a state strategy for signalling a policy change to the international community, whilst the reality on the ground remains unchanged.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2025) Street-Level Bureaucrats Manufacturing Migrants: An Implementation Study of Intentionally Ambiguous Policy Measures to Address Statelessness in the Dominican Republic, Social Policy & Administration, 59:4, 666–678, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.13155
Birth Registration as Bordering Practice: Theorizing States’ Production of Statelessness among Migrants’ Descendants
Allison J. Petrozziello
Around the world migrants’ descendants face a heightened risk of statelessness—and not only in contexts of forced migration. As states securitize both identity and migration management systems, how might the introduction of ‘bordering practices’ prevent racialized people on the move from proving their identity and claiming citizenship—in any country—for their progeny?
This paper advances an intersectional feminist and multiscalar border theory of how states produce statelessness among migrants’ descendants by restricting access to birth certificates and proof of citizenship. It engages in mid-range theory building based on content analysis of the author’s global inventory of UN treaty body recommendations on birth registration issued to 58 countries across the five major world regions. The evidence demonstrates that far from being upheld as a fundamental human right, birth registration can function as a bordering practice for children born to those whom a given state is unwilling to recognize. A typology of bordering practices is proposed, comprised of corporeal, social, spatial, and temporal types. This enables researchers to analytically distinguish the types of practices which produce intergenerational statelessness in diverse contexts of human mobility. The framework makes a novel and interdisciplinary contribution to international studies of migration, human rights, citizenship, statelessness, and gender.
Conference Paper
Canadian Political Science Association 2025
“Borders, Borderlands, and Gender” and “Statelessness and Gender Discrimination"
Allison J. Petrozziello
This four-volume encyclopedia set is organized to allow the reader to explore gender and politics from an updated interdisciplinary, intersectional, and global perspective. The organization format will be an A-Z approach of approximately 500-600 entries (with entries ranging in word count from 1,500-3,000 words, with some entries on foundational topics at around 5,000). The selected entries examine in the interplay of gender and migration through borders and the phenomenon of statelessness.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2025) “Borders, Borderlands, and Gender” and “Statelessness and Gender Discrimination,” International Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender, Roberts, L., ed. Sage Publishing. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-international-encyclopedia-of-politics-and- gender/book286827
Identity documentation as development: How do migrants and their children figure?
Allison J. Petrozziello
Identity documentation (ID) is now recognised as a development concern, especially since the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 16.9 on legal identity for all, including birth registration. However, achieving universal birth registration is not a straightforward task in contexts of human mobility. Where questions of belonging are unsettled, documentation may be issued to some and denied to others on discriminatory grounds. This chapter identifies four obstacles to birth registration for migrant women’s children which directly prevent the realisation of SDG 16.9: gender gaps in women’s independent access to ID; migration enforcement in the process of birth registration; access to reproductive healthcare; and linkage of birth registration with social welfare entitlements. If access to documentation for migrants and birth certificates for their children is not addressed, this directly hinders not only the achievement of legal identity for all, but also states’ capacity to measure achievement of all the SDGs.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2024) Identity documentation as development: How do migrants and their children figure?” chap. 11 in Piper, N. and K. Datta, eds. The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 137-150. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802204513.00018
Gaps and Challenges for Ensuring Universal Birth Registration for Children Born to Migrants and Multiply Marginalized Mothers
Allison J. Petrozziello
The research offers an intersectional analysis of patterns of exclusion from birth registration which generate a risk of statelessness for children of migrants and refugees, as well as other multiply marginalized peoples around the world. Drawing on the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion’s database, the author compiled a Global Inventory of Exclusionary Birth Registration Practices, which have been denounced before UN human rights mechanisms between 2010-2022. These include observations by the Human Rights Council (HRC) through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR); Human Rights Committee (monitoring the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR); Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD); Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR); Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW); Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC); and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The Global Inventory establishes the global breadth of the problem of exclusion from birth registration affecting migrants’ children in particular. This was complemented with in-depth case study research among descendants of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, which is the country which has received the highest number of UN human rights observations on the issue of birth registration in the world. Selected findings are presented here as an input for consideration by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in its study on Universal Birth Registration and the Use of Digital Technologies. The author remains available for consultation or public presentations of the available evidence. The full dissertation can be shared upon request.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2024) Gaps and Challenges for Ensuring Universal Birth Registration for Children Born to Migrants and Multiply Marginalized Mothers. Written submission to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Geneva, to inform Study on Universal Birth Registration and the Use of Digital Technologies - Human Rights Council Resolution 52/25.
La problematización de las ‘parturientas haitianas’ y otras estrategias de control fronterizo” [Problematizing Haitian Women as ‘Birthers’ and Other Border Control Strategies]
Allison J. Petrozziello
Informed by intersectional feminist theory and critical migration and border studies, this chapter offers a critical reading of media and political discourse on the so-called ‘Haitian birthers’ and its effects on women’s lives. It presents findings from qualitative research in the Enriquillo sub-region of the Dominican Republic with 50 families of Haitian ancestry who are attempting to access healthcare and civil registration services. It aims to deconstruct the nationalist logic which problematizes Haitian women’s reproduction and justifies migration raids in maternity wards in order to reveal the power relations which produce and naturalize exclusion and violence. The chapter concludes with a call for solidarity among women in order to defend our bodily autonomy and demand that the State protect and invest in our health and well-being. Bordering practices deployed in the name of the nation increase state control over our bodies, undermine human security and dignity, and weaken our society and democracy. If the patriarchy teaches women to fight among ourselves for the few resources available, then we must reframe our understanding of the problem beyond the borders imposed upon us in order to claim our fundamental right to health.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2023). “La problematización de las ‘parturientas haitianas’ y otras estrategias de control fronterizo” [Problematizing Haitian Women as ‘Birthers’ and Other Border Control Strategies]. Chap. 1 in Miradas desencadenantes: Voces que desafían, Conferencias Dominicanas de Estudios de Género, INTEC and UNHCR: Santo Domingo.
Asking the ‘other questions’: Applying intersectionality to understand statelessness in Europe
Allison J. Petrozziello
This chapter is an invitation to join the conversation on how to bring inter-sectional feminist analyses to statelessness work. It presents an introductory analysis of how a complex web of power, socio-cultural, disciplinary, interpersonal, hegemonic, and structural relations impact those affected by statelessness. The discussion is grounded in the experiences of multiply marginalized populations in Europe, such as Romani women and same-sex parents. The authors contribute theoretical and practical expertise to move the sector towards a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of people affected by statelessness, and what this means for policy advocacy in the short and longer term.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2021). “Asking the ‘other questions’: Applying intersectionality to understand statelessness in Europe” chap 16 in Bloom, T. and Kingston, L., eds. Statelessness, Governance, and the Problem of Citizenship. Manchester Univ. Press.
Statelessness as a Product of Slippery Statecraft: A Global Governance View of Current Causes, Actors, and Debates
Allison J. Petrozziello
Statelessness has been described as the result of unintentional gaps between citizenship policies excluding individuals who move, form relationships and reproduce across international borders. But what if the rise in statelessness is not a technicality, but a strategy of slippery statecraft meant to design the citizenry a given state is willing to protect? This paper places statelessness within the context of neoliberal globalisation and international migration and provides a critical global governance view of contemporary causes of statelessness, key actors working on it and their framing of the issue within global governance frameworks. I argue that the dominant framing of statelessness as a technical issue obviates the politics behind statelessness as slippery statecraft, leading proposed solutions to fall short. Critical research may help advocates make the case for inclusion, appealing to broader state interests and networks, without abandoning attendant human rights obligations.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2019) Statelessness as a Product of Slippery Statecraft: A Global Governance View of Current Causes, Actors, and Debates. The Statelessness and Citizenship Review, 1:2, 136–155. https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/view/43/13
Bringing the Border to Baby: Birth Registration as Bordering Practice for Migrant Women’s Children
Allison J. Petrozziello
Babies born ‘out of place’ to migrant mothers pose a challenge to states seeking to restrict access to migration and citizenship. In places as diverse as Texas, Tel Aviv, and Santo Domingo, policymakers have been modifying administrative requirements to limit access to birth certificates for babies born to migrant women with temporary or irregular status as a measure aimed at discouraging their permanent settlement. This raises concerns regarding the gendered ways in which women can be controlled via their reproductive lives when childbirth is made a juncture of migration enforcement, and children’s right to an identity and a nationality violated as a result. Rights advocates are pushing back against this practice using existing human rights frameworks. This article provides an overview of what birth registration as a bordering practice looks like so that scholars, policymakers, and practitioners around the world can recognise and resist it. It focuses on the case of the Dominican Republic’s denial of birth certificates for people of Haitian descent, and an action-research project aiming to facilitate access to the Dominican civil registry for children of mixed couples (migrant mother and Dominican father). It concludes by highlighting the implications for the babies born ‘in between’ – who are at risk of statelessness and other rights violations – and pointing to international frameworks for upholding children’s right to a nationality.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2019) Bringing the Border to Baby: Birth Registration as Bordering Practice for Migrant Women’s Children. Gender & Development, 27:1, 31-47. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13552074.2019.1570724
(Re)producing Statelessness via Indirect Gender Discrimination: Descendants of Haitian Migrants in the Dominican Republic
Allison J. Petrozziello
Gender discrimination as a risk factor for statelessness has been understood as direct discrimination whereby legal frameworks prohibit mothers from conferring their nationality. This article discusses research findings from the Dominican Republic where indirect gender discrimination, evident in documentation and birth registration practices applicable to Haitian migrants and descendants, is causing matrilineal transmission of statelessness. Restricting access to citizenship has become a form of migration control, just as the creation of temporary, ad hoc status forms allows the state to sidestep responsibilities for migrant incorporation. If the links between gender and statelessness are not only legal, but also historical, structural, and procedural, then disrupting this cycle requires more than legal reform. For advocacy campaigns, such as UNHCR's #IBelong Campaign and the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, to be successful, they must adopt a broader interpretation of the relationship between gender and statelessness, based on CEDAW's substantive conception of gender equality.
Allison J. Petrozziello (2019)(Re)producing Statelessness via Indirect Gender Discrimination: Descendants of Haitian Migrants in the Dominican Republic. International Migration, 47:1, 213-228, DOI: 10.1111/imig.12527.