At Risk of Statelessness: Children Born in Lebanon to Migrant Domestic Workers

Abstract

Lebanon has many migrant domestic workers, most of whom are women. While migrant domestic workers’ contracts prohibit pregnancy and childbearing, a substantial number of women give birth in Lebanon, and their children are at risk of statelessness. Through our examination of nationality laws and birth registration regulations, and their implementation in both Lebanon and migrants’ origin countries, this article offers an intersectional, gender analysis of conditions contributing to the risks of statelessness for such children. It seeks to contribute new insights into a seemingly intractable problem in Lebanon. Our investigation of laws and regulations is situated within a discussion of Lebanon's kafala system of migrant sponsorship that structures conditions under which migrant workers live. We triangulate our analysis by drawing on 13 semistructured interviews with key informants in Lebanon. We demonstrate that the risk of statelessness for children born to migrant domestic workers in Lebanon is enmeshed in a complex gendered and racialized conjunction of controls exercised over migrant domestic workers’ reproductive capacity, mobility, migration status, and right to pass on their nationality to their children. Based on this analysis, we identify potential strategies to secure citizenship for migrant domestic workers’ children at risk of statelessness. Our article makes analytical and empirical contributions to an emergent body of scholarship focusing on the growing phenomenon of childhood statelessness in “irregularized” migration contexts.