| Summary/Abstract |
Mira Siegelberg has written an important and challenging book. It began as a doctoral dissertation that I was privileged to discuss with her as it took shape. The dissertation, in turn, originated with a profound question that presented both theoretical and practical challenges and I believe has continued as the underlying thread: what does statelessness imply in a world covered by and divided into states? How is it conceptually and legally accommodated? How does the condition of statelessness help define the world of nation-states? What is the civic status of the stateless subject, often expelled from his or her homeland, who lacks the credentials to claim entry elsewhere? To this end, Siegelberg has immersed herself in a century and a half of difficult legal thought, some of it well-known, but a great deal unearthed as the usually ignored articulations of our everyday practices.
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