"Where do I belong, when they call me a foreigner in my homeland?"

Abstract: This thesis examines the situation of people living in statelessness by asking 'What is statelessness?' With the aim of contributing to the contemporary understanding of the topic, the text reviews both the resonating theories of Hannah Arendt, as well as original interviews with people living in statelessness today. In accordance with recent critique directed towards the Arendtian school on statelessness, the readings of the interviews are done by the means of discourse analysis. The concluding discussion gives a collective answer to the research question and finds that statelessness is a phenomena characterized by its contrasts to citizenship, its uncertain relationship to both rights and law and order, and its unidentifiable shape. Due to the contrasting understandings portrayed by the theoretical and empirical reviews concerning stateless people’s relation to the nation, it is unclear whether this is community which affects statelessness in a negative or a positive manner.