Statelessness in Germany: How Christiana Bukalo fights for the rights of (many!) people without passports

Statelessness in Germany: Christiana Bukalo and her organization Statefree are committed to helping stateless people.

As this text is being written, Christiana Bukalo should actually be in Miami. She was supposed to have received an award there for her work with the non-profit organization Statefree, which she founded, and was invited to a conference. But she was denied a visa - again. Bukalo, born and raised in a suburb of Munich , is stateless. Her parents' births were not registered in their West African homeland, and so when they came to Germany over 30 years ago, they could not prove their citizenship. And although the 31-year-old has spent her entire life here, studying and working, Christiana Bukalo does not have German citizenship. Or any other citizenship whatsoever.

She only gradually realizes what this means. During school, her class has to travel to a neighboring town for swimming lessons because the swimming pool in her hometown of Puchheim is being renovated – but Christiana's semi-annual temporary residence permit only applies to her home district. "I still remember asking myself, as we drove past this town sign on the bus, 'Am I going to tell someone that I'm not actually allowed to be here?'" she explains in an interview we conducted shortly before the fourth anniversary of Statefree's founding. Something like that was always associated with a lot of shame. In her youth, Bukalo did volunteer work, often working as a supervisor on youth camps run by the Protestant church. But when the camp was supposed to take place in Spain for the first time, she couldn't go because Christiana didn't have a travel document until her 18th birthday. "Which children even think about their rights? You just accept everything as it is. Although today I would say: Traveling is such a great privilege, it's not one of the biggest problems for stateless people. But back then, it was the point where I most noticed my disadvantage compared to others," she says. And, of course, when it came to ID cards and moments like "ordering the first beer." "I couldn't just show my tolerated status: a DIN A4 sheet of paper with my name misspelled on it."

Although outrage over the injustices is growing, Bukalo tends to push the issue aside, trying to lead a "normal" life as best she can. She studies (at a private university; without her citizenship, she's not allowed to attend a public university—so she has to take out a loan), works in PR, and later in organizational development. With her first well-paid job, she wants to treat herself to a trip to Morocco and finally make use of her stateless travel document. She prepares, checks the entry requirements, but receives no information from either the Moroccan embassy or the Munich immigration office. She flies anyway—and is turned away after hours of security checks; after a 20-hour layover at the airport, she has to take the first flight back to Germany. "That was the moment I realized the full extent of the problem. It's one thing to be stateless, but it's another to not even get the information you need to structure your life as a stateless person," she says. Bukalo researched, came across the numbers, and was shocked: There are currently around 126,000 people without citizenship living in Germany, and an estimated 15 million worldwide. "Then I thought: If it affects so many people, why is it such an isolating experience to be stateless? And what about creating a place where stateless people can meet?" She came across a few organizations online that work on the issue, but then realized that none of them involve stateless people. "Just imagine! Statelessness is so invisible from the outside. It would be immediately noticeable if there was a women's rights association where only men work. But that was the case with statelessness."

There are around 126,000 people living in Germany without citizenship. "If it affects so many people, why is it such an isolating experience?"

She decided to counter this with her own organization. On April 17, 2021, she founded Statefree, with the goal of "creating community, visibility, and equality for stateless people. We do this by transforming the role of stateless people from victims to shapers of the system. We want to ensure that decisions affecting stateless people are also shaped with them."

These people, for example, have no right to vote . Although they are completely controlled by external political decisions, they have no influence over them. There are many requirements for naturalization in Germany: length of stay, education, language skills, secure livelihood – all things Christiana Bukalo could put a big tick under. "But the main requirement is a clear identity and citizenship. If you break it down very bluntly, you need a passport to get one. Especially in Germany, identity is virtually equated with citizenship. An identity is made up of various things – my name, date of birth, or place of birth, for example." Bukalo also points out that a greater awareness of statelessness should prevail, especially in this country. "During the Second World War, certain groups were rendered stateless by Germany. Hannah Arendt was rendered stateless. Albert Einstein was also stateless, and yet you would never say that these people have no identity."